Please forgive my tardiness. I am completely surrounded by disorganization, that is on it’s way to being organized. Who could stop in the midst of all this chaos to write a blog. Not I. But by the time I am finished, even the Swiss would be proud. They might in fact give me a second award (the first being awarded from the Swiss School of Packing) for my organizational acumen. By next week we will be able to put our fingers (in white gloves) on every creation created in this studio. See you next week.

Oh boy, this should get me in real trouble. I’ve always had a way of “stirring the pot” and seeing what rises to the surface, but what I am about to tell you will probably really curdle your milk.

You see it’s my belief that the classical notion of being noble and distinguished, represents one’s moral character. And that a fall from grace requires first that you have reached the level of moral courage and fortitude (this is not an easy task).

Somehow along the way with the help of capitalism, a few robber barons, and a touch of Calvinism, America (and the rest of the western world) began to worship or should I say confuse monetary success with nobility and wisdom.

My parents were perfect paradigms of this belief. How could anyone of great wealth, power, elicit anything but great admiration. Most conventional religions have joined the party. The more money you make, the more money for them. Never mind that one’s soul is empty, one’s brain befit of ideas, one’s being second rate as long as one has financially succeeded. Monetary success is to be envied and applauded.

The soul who labors honestly with integrity and a true sense of service to their job can only be valuable up to a point. True success comes from a self made man of means or notoriety.

Now I realize this is ridiculously simplistic, and you might ask what this has to do with photography, so I am trying really hard to quickly get to my point, and skip all the research that is necessary to back up anything I say.

About 25 years ago I gave a lecture. A woman came up to me at the end of the lecture and said to me, “You are so clear. I have never met anyone who knows who they are as well as you. I am so confused. How do I become clear?”

Well this is the problem as I see it, and there is definitely no easy answer. I have been struggling with this for 45 years.

America, as personified by Dale Carnegie and others have placed this enormous premium on success, which I assume is monetary success. They have preached along with various churches that it is more important to influence others, to smile, to be positive, to be engaged and to influence others so that you may reap your reward, more success. Somehow, misleading others telling them things they want to hear is supposed to make us more civilized. Well this is the fork in the road I suggest you may not want to take.

Take it all right to win friends, to be happy, to influence others, to sell them on things they didn’t want, to tell them it is for their own good when it is really for your own benefit, to endear yourself to others at the cost of loosing who you are.

I have tried (and for some who know me well have seen me get physically sick) when I feel I have been lying to others.

I have tried for over 45 years, to my own self be true. I have tried to be clear and precise, to say what I feel, to understand my feelings and thoughts, and express them clearly and concisely even if there are dire consequences.

So if you ask me a question and you are truly serious about the answer, I will tell you how I see it. It is hard enough to know one’s self, to speak honestly from your heart and let the conversation begin. Two people lying to each other get’s one nowhere.

Now to the photograph. If you are honest with yourself, something magical is so below all this stupid stuff. It’s your soul speaking honestly. It is below making friends and influencing people. It is below money and prestige. A great portrait is a picture of the very core of your honest soul, if you can find it and let it out.

Do you remember a world where men distinguished themselves by aspiring to be gentle men, where one’s word was more potent than a contract, where a woman was a lady and had special privilege, well I almost do.

But, what I do most definitely remember is when a photograph was admissible as evidence in a courtroom as factual, where retouching mostly constituted a removal of a scratch or dust, or some slight modifications. I realize there has always been some desire to moderate the picture. As a painter adds and subtracts reality at his will, but that very quality of dealing with the real world and using film to its full advantage was one of the great thrills of being a photographer.

Recently I understand that there has been discussion as to if I retouch my photographs. There is a photograph that I shot in the Dominican Republic, with a woman standing on the edge of a Sea Plane wing. Let me assure anyone that doubts its validity, she was there standing on the very tip of that wing, and the very notion of adding her (posthumously) to the actual picture would be against “the lie agreed upon” which is a photograph.

You see photography as I know it is not illustration, painting, printing, compositing, collage, or anything else, although it has rapidly become this. Photography is a joyful affirmation of the world as it is given to us at the given moment.

I used to like the fact that Vanity Fair magazine would time and date the photograph, as if it was a specific moment never to be recaptured again. Now it feels like a sham. What part of the picture are they talking about? As the picture represents a composite of many moments and places.

I understand that I am a dying dinosaur and in my fashion I also understand that I have manipulated pictures from the first days of making them. I was always aware of the strengths and limitations of film and it’s response to light, and would use the characteristics of film to my own advantage, but also often to its disadvantage.

I knew because of reciprocity law failure that light when translated onto film would diminish far more quickly than your eyes perceived it. And using only porticoes (windows, doorways, etc.) as light sources, I realized I could make part of the image go black even though your eyes would see detail. For example, in the picture below, the doorway although appearing to be black, was full of detail. I knew I could remove the detail when I shot the picture because of the quality of the film.

But this was working within the confines of the film and knowing the medium I was working in. So I guess I have retouched as well, but here is the difference, I have always done it within the camera at the time the picture was made. I don’t think that this is a composite or a retouched picture. But, it definitely represents perceiving the world with a slightly different perspective. But to add to the confusion, in composing the picture I reject a great deal of reality. I change my orientation and I see things differently, but these things still all feel like the artistic endeavor to me, working with perception before the shutter is released. This is the world I operate in. I enjoy it. I realize everything has changed, but remember a change is not necessarily an improvement.

Unlike a world that is full of tattoos, vulgarity, confrontation, and mean spirit, the world I am leaving you is a world where there is a slight wink to other art forms but the medium remains unique. It is a world where certain men wear suits, not because it is the fashion, but because it represents graciousness, a kindness, and a forbearance, which is only proper if there is a lady in waiting. It is a make believe world I am trying very hard to make real once again.

I’ve never been a very nice person. I would like to be. I can remember in camp as  15 year old thinking that many of the other boys in the cabin were much nicer than I was, and I was going to try to fulfill some destiny, and resolved to be a nicer person.

I am not sure what that meant; because on the outside I was a relatively benign, fearful, harmless, and even funny, but inside I knew I had acquired my mothers powerful critical eye, and was capable in finding fault with most things and most people, which happened to also include myself. To this day I still have great difficulty liking myself although I am better at integrating the two aspects of my personality.

Ironically though, through massive doses of therapy, living, thinking, and watching, I have learned much to my amusement that this very critical dwarf that has resided in me since childhood has been my salvation. Learning how to let it out, realizing it’s potential and enormous strength has allowed me to flourish and helped me significantly as a photographer. What I took as weakness, anger, and something terribly frightful, has turned out to be confidence, strength and enormous determination. You see these terrible dark fears when released become the powerful forces that drives your green fuse. What feels so wicked, so terrible, can turn out to be so good.

As I mentioned I have a very critical eye which I have used to attack others as well as myself. Through the years (and I will tell you more about this in later blogs) there have been people such as Anna Freud and Frances Ilg (one of the founders of the Gesell Institute) and others who have commented on my perception and that not much slips by my being. I have often been referred too as witch like as I pick up clues immediately as I pick up cues about people, places, objects, etc. I once had lunch with Anna Freud and I mentioned to her that when I looked at somebody through the camera lens, I did not see all their evil but rather all their fears and anxieties and where 20 years of therapy could lead them. I could see people had a choice to choose in believing in the evil or working hard to realize they are just fears.

I can see right into your soul, and this gift has allowed me to pursue photography. Even though at this point I do not do much portraiture, I can still pick up a camera and see what lies deep within you. I can see what you would consider your weakness and frailties, but I am capable of seeing them as your greatest strengths. I know this is a life long endeavor, but if you are capable of facing your fears they will disappear and you will find the strength of character you never thought you had.

For weeks I have been reading the comments of those that feel despondent at the possibility of succeeding as a photographer without relinquishing a good part of your soul. I once again beseech you to spend your energy on finding that hidden repressed voice, to scream it out if necessary and find a way to believe and fight for your work. The battle to believe is not just with the client, it is also with ourselves.

The last few weeks I have been feeling in/out/and besides my sorts. I can’t seem to equalize all the turmoil, but Christmas is arising and I am off to see America and grandchildren, and life is slowly returning to an equilibrium. So, before I become so mellow and slip into a meditative trance, I thought I would write you a few more words of wisdom to lead us into the upcoming year. I have told this story in the past, so for those who have heard it before, please forgive, and place those new reindeer earmuffs over your ears as I tell it again.

People are often asking me what influenced my life that made me choose the life of a photographer. Here below is one of my answers.

When thinking about what were the most important experiences in my life, particularly those that had an effect on me as a photographer, here is one in particular story that stands out.  This may sound peculiar to you, but it seems perfectly normal to me.  The experience I’m about to relate has nothing to do with photography.  In thinking about this, this seems to be a pattern in my life.  I studied theology with the intention of being a photographer.  At first glance, one would think they have nothing to do with each other.  But, in fact, they are intimately and intricately entwined.

About 30 years ago, give or take a year or two, I had the good fortune to attend a lecture by Jerzy Kosinksi.  For those of you who don’t know who he is, or rather, I should say was, as he committed suicide some years ago, he was a director and writer of one of my favorite films, Being There.  At that time I had just become a fellow at Timothy Dwight College at Yale University.  A few times a year, the master of the college would invite people to lecture to other fellows.  It was a group of about 50-75 people.  As I lived in New York, it was hard for me to get to New Haven, but luckily that night I made it.  I’ll try to recap the lecture or perhaps I should call it a story.

Jerzy (after this lecture, I became so interested in him, we actually became quite good friends) began the lecture talking about sitting by a swimming pool in some hotel in Thailand.  He said he was sitting there peacefully reading a newspaper, when a number of Buddhist monks walked into the pool and began a conversation amongst themselves in the deep end of the pool.  As he described it, they were not standing in the pool, nor treading water.  He described it as having achieved buoyancy. For hours, they did not struggle to float, but rather were able to stand in the water in this buoyant state.

The remainder of the lecture was his personal odyssey to try and learn how these men were able to do this.  He described his upbringing in a small Polish village in the middle of Poland with no water around it whose name, when translated into English, meant ‘The Boat.’  He always thought that ironic, because there was no water anywhere in sight.  Also, he described his upbringing in which he personally was terrified of drowning.  He said that even when he took a shower he was scared to hold his face under the showerhead in fear of drowning in the water.

His first efforts when he returned back to the United States, was to replicate what these monks had done was to find an Olympic swimmer to see if he was capable of doing this.  He was not.  Not even close.  Jerzy realized it was not a question of physical strength, but rather something else.  Over the course of the next year, he described this elaborate odyssey to try and find someone somehow who could replicate what he had seen in Thailand.  No one could.  The lecture concludes with him taking everyone to the Yale pool where he began to show us what he had learned.  He was able to do what no one else was.  He was able to stand in the deep water at the deep end of the pool, with the water line slightly above his waist, carrying on a conversation with no effort.  The next day, this event was being photographed for Life Magazine where I think they actually did an article on this.  This process took him almost two years where he was finally able to get himself psychologically attuned enough to the undertaking to realize it in a pool in Switzerland.  He himself had finally achieved a buoyancy that was critical for his life.  There are many other details I won’t bore you with.  But I thought, for some of you, the story might be helpful.

Many of you are not in the right relationship with your subjects.  You think the solution comes from knowing the right camera, the right film, the right techniques, and the right secrets.  These are all beside the point.  You must realize your own wisdom.  It’s not that you don’t have talent.  It’s just that you haven’t risked enough. Please remember that next year as you begin your personal journey to find buoyancy, it most probably will not be found at photography conventions, camera demonstrations, with the use of new megapixles, but rather deep within your soul. With these thoughts I wish you all a Happy Holiday Season and more content New Year.

Beside the fact that I never camp, I am still not a happy camper. I have been putting off writing my ruminations because I feel like a lone wolf in the arctic, howling into an empty world with nobody listening. But alas, like a good fool who continually hits his head against a solid wall, I will get all my ranting out today and next week I will arrive with a more gentle Yule tide spirit.

Many years ago I had the good fortune to spend some days with Ansel Adams in his house and darkroom. It was an era when photographic technique was truly a test of craftsmanship. There was a nuance to technique; one that would help exemplify one’s own inner feelings. One’s technical expertise was like a painter’s expression through his brush work. A painter’s choice of pigment and it’s expression would help to reflect their inner demons or strivings. It was a further affirmation of their vision.

As I was intense and nurturing a very critical eye, my needs were for deep rich shadow detail. I struggled for years with developers, papers, etc., to find the right formulas. My copy of Ansel Adams, The Negative and The Print became so thread bare it became like a sarcophagus that had dried out and would crumble into dust with the slightest touch.

Over the years I would correspond with Ansel Adams, and finally an opportunity arose to spend slightly more than a week with him in Carmel, CA. At the time I was primarily a 35 mm and large format photographer, and my pictures aesthetically had very little relationship to his, but my technique was all derived from Mr. A.

So I spent a good part of a long week with him, pumping him in his darkroom, at lunch, etc., with every conceivable technical question I could think of. He most graciously answered EVERY question. All his photographic history, experience and photographic life he was willing to share with me, and I listened very, VERY carefully.

It distilled down to this. There is no easy answer. There is no pill to take the embodies you with technical and aesthetic wisdom. If you want to be a classics scholar (a.k.a a noble photographer) you must learn all the rudiments. You must learn Latin, Greek, and you must study endlessly. You must spend years with your craft and you must live your life and mingle your craft with your feelings. On occasion someone is so vulnerable that they can skip a few steps but this is a rare gift from the Gods.

Life must flow in your heart and be regulated by your discipline and craftsmanship.

So I say to the nice lady who wrote me a rather angry letter, that since it took only a few seconds to take a picture (not months or years like a painting) that my pictures are only worth a few hundred of dollars, not the thousands that I charge, it may have taken a few seconds to take the picture, but it took over 60 years to MAKE it.

Thank you. Good night, Good Day and Good Luck.

Well, who knew everyone was so enamored to their smile. I thought you’d like to give it up like a bad night’s hangover, but oh no, it’s how people ingratiate themselves to each other. It’s your comfort zone. Well step out of it.

Otherwise, keep your smiles. Mr. Scrooge here will have none of it. I will stay cool, aloof and oh so current as my imaginary woof, Oklahoma and I curl up together and cry if we want to. See it’s my party.

Oh by the way, the song today is a Happy Thanksgiving to you all. See you next week, laughing all the way.

“Smile though your heart is aching
Smile even though it’s breaking
When there are clouds in the sky, you’ll get by
If you smile through your fear and sorrow
Smile and maybe tomorrow
You’ll see the sun come shining through for you.”
- Words by John Turner and Geoffrey Parsons, Music by Charlie Chaplin

On this late fall day, in the month of November, in the 2011 year of our Lord, I realized the same is true today as it was 300 years earlier. Although, it took my teenage daughter Savannah to remind me of this.

Let me start at the beginning. I have the sweetest, nicest, cutest daughter around; at least I think I do. You see I rarely have the opportunity to know this for sure. As our daily ritual proceeds, Savannah will quickly pass by me, dashing off a quick “Hi Dad,” and then slam her door behind her.

If I happen to chance an entrance to her chamber I am immediately confronted with an exclamation of “OUT,” and a long hand and finger pointing to the door. She protects her territory from her father like he was a dangerous predator, and rarely does she have much to say to yours truly. I know there is love there somewhere deep, deep down in her soul for her father, but mostly there is embarrassment and disgust at the fact that anyone could be so stupid or so old.

Imagine my surprise yesterday when out of the blue, she tells me a story about when she was a little girl, she remembered that as I was trying to get her to be still to take her portrait I would often say, “Don’t smile.”

She thought this odd as all the pictures she saw of her friends were with them smiling and she had never forgot that I had asked her not to smile.

Now that she is older, she told me that she had mentioned this to her friends and they had told her that they felt that that made sense to them knowing my pictures.

Now, what is the meaning of all this? America has always had it’s own perculiar fascination with perception, particularly other people’s perception of themselves.

Somehow along the convoluted way of history, the mass of men and women felt it imperative to be viewed with a smile.

Smile for the camera, smile for your grandparents, smile for your friends, smile to your teachers? It is a wonder that people’s faces are not frozen in a smile.

I know many women who have had face lifts can’t possibly smile, their face is so tightly strung, but this is a whole different matter.

Where does this fascination, this personal sense of how we want to be seen come from? I have an idea.

For years when I was making portraits of the chieftains of industry, commerce, celebrity, or politicians, their first inclination in front of the camera was to smile. Interestingly enough this was not the case with poets or writers. I would tell them as I am telling you a smile is a false sentiment. I guess one could even refer to it as sentimental. It is a way of saying to someone (not that I am approachable) but rather quite the opposite, that I have something to hide. That behind this fictitious sentiment something else lurks that I do not want to share with you. Whether they realized it or not, it connotes to go away. Rather than inviting the viewer in, it is standing them off. I feel this is the difference between a casual photograph and a portrait.

History has told them otherwise. Everyone (including their friend’s) smiles in photographs. The truth is no portrait of substance has people smiling. Look at the history of painting, Rembrandt, Titian, Goya, Velasquez, Sargent, Vermeer, DaVinci, etc., the subjects gaze to the viewer is neutral at best, neither inviting nor forbidding. It is there for the viewer to see and feel.

Smiling is like much of American popular culture, superficial and misleading. It is part of our vernacular, but it should be expunged in photographs.

Laughter is real. Anger, joy, resentment, frustration are powerful and meaningful sentiments to be expressed. But because of this people do not want to share what lies within, so instead let’s lie without with a smile.

I remember in some English class that although Jane Austin never once mentioned the Napoleonic wars in her novels, they were there…every present in the background, affecting her characters decisions and views.

Well, dear reader, let me tell you Vietnam was not only in the background of my college life, but it was in the foreground, underground, upper ground, and beside the ground of my life. It was everywhere, with fear and trembling in every day of my life. It never once left my side.

Let me digress for a second for the young-ins, who may not know what I am talking about. You see the Vietnam war (another useless incursion into other peoples life) was the last war that America fought with a draft. All able-bodied men and boys (no girls yet, as this was before one of the gifts feminism gave women, the ability to die or be maimed in combat) were subject to military service. With the attrition rate of almost 85% of the people drafted being shipped to Vietnam, and with thousands dying each month in this useless war, all my friends and most of my enemies spent a great deal of time figuring how to avoid this war. The options were, conscientious objection, fleeing to Canada, protests, army reserve (for the real elite as our heroic president George W. was able to acquire through his family), and last but most definitely not least for me a 4F disability or rejection from military service.

This last paragraph is loaded with nuance and conflicted thoughts that I will deal with at a later date. Today it is the 1960′s. In the summer of 1968 in the heat of battle, my life was completely full of Vietnam. How was I going to avoid this mess of a war?

Now let me tell you the truth, or as I often say, let’s get to the heart of the matter. I was scared out of my mind. I verbalized noble thoughts, quoted Platonic notions of objections to violence, wrote treaties on the ontological unfairness of the draft and even considered joining the Quakers, but deep within my heart I was just scared to die in Vietnam. The military, the system, all became the enemy and my contemporaries and I marched in protest.

Although the truth was I was sincerely morally opposed to the war, and despised Richard Nixon, unfortunately if there were no draft the world would have been as it is today, a country oblivious to the financial, emotional turmoil that a war causes. I would have gone my own way and left the fighting to others, but this was not to be the case in the very early fall of fall of 1969 when I received a well stamped and curtly versed letter from the U.S. Government demanding that I show up for my draft physical in two weeks.

Let’s return to the scene of the crime for a moment. For years leading up to this day as I already mentioned, I was in a state of catatonic fear that this day would arrive. I protested, I prayed to every God that I could think of that the war would end before my time, but like no wine before it’s time, this was not to be the case. So being a good A student, I started in my freshman year, my plan of attack. As a young boy I had migraine headaches and rest assured that the simple thought of marching into battle the headaches would return with a vengeance. I wrote my family doctor as a child and he kindly wrote a simple one-sentence note that he had treated me as a child and that I had recurrent migraine headaches. There was no more or no less to this letter.

No one, least of all me happened to bring forth that I hadn’t had one in over ten years, but this sentence was at least a beginning.

I learned that migraine headaches could get you out of military service, so starting in my freshman year I made weekly trips to the medical school to read every treatise and talk with every physician and patient that I could find about migraines.

By the time I was through I could have become a specialist. I knew every symptom, every drug available, but most of all I knew that migraines, at the time, could not be empirically diagnosed.

So along with about 50 other students I went on a bus to some military hospital to begin my physical and mental evaluation. Tucked ever so gently in my left breast pocket was the letter from Dr. Robbins, for all the world to see that I was a casualty of migraines.

For hours upon hours we filled out forms and eventually started the physical exam. By now I had written in huge letters in every spot I could find that had headaches and total anxiety at the thought of even being brought to that hospital.

After giving up my forms, they took my blood pressure, which I was somewhat able to control hoping that an elevated blood pressure would help reject me from consideration. The problem was, in this case, it was so completely out of control, and I was so nervous that the pressure was off the charts. They immediately told me I would have to spend a week at this military hospital for evaluation. They thought I had taken some drug to elevate my blood pressure to avoid service. Little did they know that it was just fear. Well as soon as they mentioned my incarceration I told them to take it again and it was normal. I don’t know which was more frightening at the time, the hospital or Vietnam.

Next came the migraines. Over the course of the next three months they had me evaluated by at least four different specialists. Back and forth I would go to that hospital but my homework had paid off and ultimately I received my 4F deferment. Then I was so proud of myself, and Vietnam began to be like a Jane Austin novel, appearing only in the background. Today, well that’s a whole other story.

By popular request, I will put off good morning, good day, and good evening Vietnam until next week, and thought instead I’d dive forward into the backwards way I approach a photographic assignment.

Let me begin with a recent assignment to photograph for one of my all time favorite creative directors, Janet Froelich. The assignment was to shoot approximately five photographs that illustrated how women have different energy levels and abilities through the course of the day. Their energy rises and falls as the day progresses.

So there is the big picture. My restraints were that it had to be shot in one day with one model and because of the number and type of pictures it had to be shot in one location. The first thought that went through my little noodle of a brain was outright fear. How am I going to do this? What does this idea have to do with photographs? I would have much rather gone and taken a nap. But with the challenge of a new day and with a necessity to pay my mortgage, I began to organize my process.

Janet had mentioned to me a picture that I had shot years ago for her, with a clock in the picture. With this, a large tick and a little tock went off in my head. I was now off and running. This revelation got me going, I was now able to leave my fears behind and move into possibilities. This transition happens on every shoot. Once I get a vague idea on how to approach the problem I intuitively know where I am going. The next step is to immediately call Renate, my stylist (the miracle of 29th Street) to put her on hold for the shoot, and to try to get her to either come to the first production meeting (in this case there was none) or for her, myself, Michael (the studio manager), Patricia (My first assistant and all around know everything person) to get together for breakfast or lunch. We love to eat away our fears as we begin to talk about ideas props and wardrobe.

This first meeting is usually crucial. We all throw out ideas and usually agree by the end of the meeting on the props and type of wardrobe. In this case I remember thinking that time is the answer to the problem. If we use different clocks and wardrobes that represent different times of day perhaps we could at least represent the passage of time.

There is always dialectic I must work within. How do I make my pictures that will also work for the clients needs? If you just simply looked at my pictures one might wonder how they compliment a specific clients requests, but they do in my fashion. I am not an illustrator, nor do I want to be. I do not composite pictures together everything is shot in camera. All I do up to this point is arrange the general guidelines of the shoot. If after this first meeting it is decided that we need large props I start the process working, I choose the model, and began the truly hard work (for me) to find the appropriate location. I knew for this shoot, it had to be one large location with a variety of possibilities. As it was late winter, with snow on the ground, and still bitter cold, I knew we had to find an interior location.

Some years ago I had seen an article on a large Stanford White mansion that had been restored in Rhinebeck, New York. It had recently been used for Chelsea Clinton’s wedding, and I luckily found it in a location service directory. This is often not the case and takes many days of scouting, but on this day, we were lucky. So now it was all coming together. I had the props, the location, model chosen, driven to Rhinebeck to quickly look at the location to make sure it was as it seemed…and it was.

I have talked before how at the location I look but do not want to see. All I want to know is that I like it and that I can make pictures there. That is all, nothing specific. So with that, everyone arrived and the shooting began.

Although my pictures look so contrived, peaceful and composed, they are totally spontaneous. Five minutes before I do not know what I am going to do. I see the model in the clothes, look at the prop, and decide based somewhat on the light, the location where best to shoot it, and off to the races we go.

I love the process of making pictures. I love the collaborative effort, the laughter, the food and the fun. During these days I love being a photographer. Until, that is, I look at the film…