breathing and image-making keep this guy going. 

since early childhood i was the family documentarian— flashing blinding one-off blue bulbs in annoyed family faces.  in high school i set up my first darkroom in the basement toolshed.

after dabbling in the liberal arts for three years (and wandering the streets of Paris for a semester) i found myself back in my own backyard, driving thru prospect park en route to pratt institute, stopped at a red light trading glances with the caged zoo elephants.

then the idea of creating the daguerrotypes of the 21st century - and generally postponing adulthood -wooed me to mit in cambridge to pursue advanced visual studies there.

for years afterwards i worked freelance in video and indy film production - mostly pbs - in new york and boston. one day on set i was drafted to do a cameo as the tentative typing hands of william carlos williams composing his famous poem about the raindrop-red wheelbarrow and white chickens on a typewriter.

but the poetry of the still image was my first  love - and that cut was the deepest - so i let my hands go where they wanted and picked up the still camera again.

moving to chicago in mid life, i unpacked my family and camera gear and started shooting...sniffing the vapor trail of fixer to the local art center on lake michigan to make pictures again. a rolleiflex (and the square format) became my new obsession— forcing me to slow down and focus on the world flipped horizontal at waist level on checkerboarded ground glass— and to set up a dedicated pro darkroom in my circa 1865 basement with proper ventilation and running water (the wooden basement tree pillars were original).

somehow, after years of searching, i became a photography teacher, then the art department chair at new trier high school.  a master of liberal arts degree followed shortly from the university of chicago - where i read a lot, thought a lot, wrote a lot, and shot a lot - ultimately creating  a photography thesis. 

to this day i photograph almost every day, & exhibit locally and nationally, & from time to time, internationally.

lately have also been creating one-of-a-kind artist books in my monk’s cell of a studio. three of them have been juried into international artist’s books exhibitions that travelled throughout europe and, largely due to my efforts, finally crossed the atlantic for the first time in 25 years for the pemière usa exhibition of the artists’ book triennial at the evanston art center in the summer of 2019.  

a friend photographing me photographing in kolkata

... photograph taken