On January 25th, 1968, on a cold frigid night, I began to realize that the world I loved and knew was slipping away before me. I must admit it was a peculiar place and time to realize this, but often life will do this to you.

It all happened at Sardi’s, a well-known theater rendez-vous and restaurant. It was opening night for Robert Anderson’s, “I Never Sang for My Father” and as usual there was a post-opening night party for the cast, friends, supporters, etc., upstairs at this famous haunt.

Robert Anderson was a famous playwright with a long list of Broadway hits and movie credits behind him. He was one of America’s most loved and revered playwrights. He also happened to be my Father-in-law, confidant, and important influence in my early years.

Everyone was there in anticipation, enjoying the reverie, the food, and laughing. Everyone was relieved that opening night was behind them, but in dread of the reviews, which in a few hours, could make or break the play. In reality, there was only one review that mattered at that time, and that was the review of The New York Times.

Robert Anderson was a contemporary of Arthur Miller, William Inge, and Tennessee Williams. On the musical side he was a friend of Richard Rogers. Around this time all of these people and many more without them realizing it, were being discarded for a more modern, discordant, expressionistic world. Modernism had invaded the arts and it was slowly permeating every facet of contemporary culture. For a critic, it was imperative to be in the know. Your job was to be on the cutting edge, leaping forward into the modern world, never-mind what it looked like, as long as it was new. It was so exciting, or so everyone felt.

There was modern, even the beginnings of post-modern architecture, which, except in the hands of very few, such as Louis Kahn, reflected a truly ugly vernacular. There was horrific discordant music, novels without ends, painting that abandoned realism, beauty and discipline for spontaneity, energy and excitement.

It was all changing right before my eyes, but on that January night in 1968, upstairs at Sardi’s that a small explosion occurred in my head. I realized I was straddling the world I knew and loved with a new world that lay right before me. I was so young. I had to find a way to embrace or at least acknowledge what lied before me.

Every facet of contemporary life was now up for grabs. Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra had already been completely overrun by Rock and Roll, and unfortunately the world and its critics did not seem able to accept one along with the other. There seemed to be very little room for both. To be in the know, one had to choose.

So on that fateful day in 1968, Robert Anderson received an early copy of the review of his play, by Clive Barnes of The New York Times. He panned it as old fashioned with sentiment too powerful for the modern world. This masterpiece of a play closed after 124 performances. Robert Anderson, after this play, could never again get a favorable review from The New York Times. His time had come and gone. A man I loved and admired had been rejected. His voice was no longer needed or heeded. His accomplishments represented the past, and the future had no room for him or many of his contemporaries.

Sure there were revivals and accolades, but the world was ready to discard and leave Robert Anderson and his contemporaries behind. It was a new day.

Even on that night, I realized I was a misfit. What I loved and respected was being rejected and what I thought ugly and sensational was being applauded; yet there had to be a place where I belonged. Oh where, oh where would I go?

While living in New Haven, Connecticut in the early 1970′s, my wife worked as a nursery school teacher at the Gesell Institute.

Arnold Gesell, along with his partner Francis Ilg, was one of the leading child development theorists of the twentieth century. They believed and wrote extensively that children went through stages. These books assured millions of American mothers in the 50′s that the torment that their child was going through was only a stage, and like most things it would pass.

By the time we were in New Haven, Dr. Gesell had died, but Dr. Ilg, his wonderful, motherly, heavyset, Norwegian Dame oversaw the institute. The nursery school the institute ran was full of vivacious, beautiful, Norwegian interns and a few regulars. It was always fun to poke my head into this vibrant, if not slightly crazy atmosphere of laughing, screaming children being comforted by beautiful young women. It always seemed like a truly fun place to work.

Over time, I got to know Dr. Ilg and others at the institute, but it was Dr. Ilg who influenced me or should I say, affected me the most.

Dr. Ilg was an extraordinarily insightful woman. People often referred to her as witch-like, as she would look right past the veneer that covered your soul, and look deep into the inner working of your being. Under the guise of the gentle, gracious, heavyset lady laid ferocious wisdom and insight.

If requested, she would lay the fundamentals of your being on the table, leaving them there for you to pick up piece by piece. I loved this. It went right to the heart of the matter and helped me realize where I stood in the world, which, as I am about to explain, was all but barely standing upright.

Her insight into people was invaluable with children who could not express themselves. She saw what troubled them without them verbalizing it and was able to provide a path to recovery.

One day at another of my famous lunches with people that I cared for, Dr. Ilg asked me to draw a tree. I remember this interchange very well as I told her I could not draw, and she responded it did not matter. For some reason I knew I was revealing myself to her and I was very fearful, but she insisted and I drew a straight heavyset trunk,  well embedded in the ground, but with very little accouterment or flourish.

It was as if I was a heavy set trunk of a person, well grounded but very, very boring. When I looked at my trunk, I again thought, “Who is this person?” It is not someone I knew very well. My tree looked like some linebacker from a football team rather than anything poetic, insightful or even delicate. Upon looking at my tree, Dr. Ilg described me in great detail. I was one of strong moral character and purpose, I was extremely well rooted and grounded, but I had enormous constraints upon my ability to flourish. These constraints would only lead to anger and resentment. She said I wanted greatly to expand, to spread my limbs and develop into something majestic. Oh how right she was!

Before we concluded our lunch, Dr. Ilg turned to me and asked, “If you could be any tree, what tree would you be?” Without a moment’s hesitation, I adamantly declared I wanted to be a White Oak.

With this she smiled, nodded, and turned to me looking me straight into my eyes and said, “Someday you will be.”

This is a disappointing and sad Christmas story. It didn’t have to be, but it just turned out that way. For some reason one simple, uneventful comment issued on Christmas Day forever changed my relationship with my mother-in-law.

On the outside it didn’t look that way, conversation continued for years with its normal banter. There were hugs and kisses, but deep within the sinews of my soul, I felt a detachment and deep disappointment with this famous lady. This woman who, in her youth, had played in films a sweet, innocent, delicate beauty. She was a legend, an Academy Award winning star of many distinguished films. Hitchcock adored her; William Wyler showered praise upon praise upon her. She was greeted with accolade after accolade, a star from her very early youth. And yet despite this applause there lay in her heart a deep fissure that was never healed between me and the life I had lived, and she, the life she had known as a child.

Teresa Wright was born in the early part of the 2oth century and grew up in Maplewood, NJ. Her mother left (abandoned) her at birth, and she was raised poor by her father, a traveling salesman. She gravitated towards theater in high school, and by the time she was 18 she had been discovered and on her way to a distinguished career.

It happened on Christmas Day, many years ago, when we were sitting comfortably around a fire opening Christmas Presents in our small house on the Connecticut shore. As usual, I don’t remember what preceded it, but what I do remember is as follows.

Teresa turned to me and said, “How could anyone with your background have any problems.” This seems, in retrospect, a fairly harmless comment, but it was filled with metaphor and distain. Her husband confronted her and said that was a ridiculous comment. Just because one has privilege in their youth, doesn’t mean that privilege can’t nurture severe emotional problems. In fact, in many cases the privilege may cause more problems than it alleviates. But Teresa held her ground and looked at me as if I would never know what true hardship was.

This simple comment felt like an outright dismissal, whether correct or incorrect, of my longstanding struggle for independence. This comment also felt like a rejection of any accomplishments I was able to achieve distinct from my parents honors. And finally it lessened all the suffering and my near total emotional breakdown that had occurred over my struggles with my past.  Although, this simple comment which with the passage of time doesn’t feel as powerful as it did then, these fleeting words still to this day feel somewhat like a window into my mother-in-laws true feelings about me and my past.

In the years that followed, in one way or another, it became clear that my background, despite the extreme financial hardships of the present were this rift between us.

So this sad little story ends not with a bang, but with a whimper. This celebrated film star, who had success ladened upon success from her teenage years, could never outlive her the anger she still felt from early childhood. Nor could this photographer who then lived close to the poverty line, ever escape the background he was struggling so hard to live past.

As Teresa had gone from poor to rich, and I from rich to poor, you would have thought our paths might have meet somewhere in the middle. But alas, the baggage we each carried was simply too heavy to bear.

Merry Christmas. See you next year.

Enough is as good as a feast -Proverbs 2:11

I’ve been sitting at my desk all morning starving myself in preparation for our big feast tonight. It’s time for our annual Christmas Extravaganza, Gala at Carmine’s in New York City.

This annual event is my time to thank all my co-conspirators who have helped me conspire to make others look good and hopefully, interesting throughout this past photographic year. These are my cohorts in a never-ending battle for truth and justice in the American picture making process.

For those of you who live far away, past the boundaries of the Hudson River, which surrounds the small enclave of Manhattan, you might not be aware of the various and glorious extremes of Manhattan eateries.

There are the Oh…so cool, so suave, and severe establishments in Lower Manhattan, where you go to see and be seen. This is where the portions are meted out to you in tiny morsels, which needs a magnifying glass to be seen. This is where an anorexic woman would feel full after one bite and others are left starving after the meal is completed.

Everything is fine, beautiful and young below 23rd Street. No self-effacing, in the know, young person would venture above the 23rd Street “Maginot Line” where you might encounter someone older than you, God forbid.

Now, what used to be the gold standard of culinary delight, where all the White, Anglo Saxton, Protestants used to reside, where the children were blessed by Prep Schools, and where life was simply swell, resided the great culinary, French masterpieces of the eighties.

As one entered these hushed walls of beauty and utter a faint Bon Soir, one felt comforted by the peace, beauty, and elegance of these restaurants.

No riff raff was allowed in. Only the masters of the universe mingled in with a few Diplomats and movie stars.  The lighting glowed evenly across all the face lifts of the women who wanted to hold onto their youth, as men’s eyes were slowly drifting to the other tables to behold a few young, beautiful women who had risked it all and ventured uptown with some men of great means.

Everything was perfect. The scenery was correct. The food impeccable, the cost beyond extravagant, and the after dinner glow, memorable.

And there is Carmine’s. Up, up into the far reaches of the Upper West Side, a bastion for the newly young and upwardly mobile families of the West Side. It is a hangout for the loud, boisterous, ruckus group of starving carnivores who are waiting to consume enormous quantities of home-style cooking served in a banquet setting.

The room seems like a New York-Italian version of a Munich beer hall, holding hundreds if not thousands of screaming with delight patrons, happy as a clam at all the delicious food set at the table before them.

No epicurean delight here, only the smells of garlic and lemon, which permeate the room, having been recently squeezed, melted and juiced into every possible entree imaginable.

Tonight we feel our souls with plates of great food in huge quantities. We will be screaming to be heard, laughing and enjoying another year gone by. Somehow for the moment all our troubles are behind us. The thought of our bellies being full simply brings out the Ho, Ho, Ho in all of us.

I think as the New Year rapidly approaches, it’s time once again for the third annual “ask and you shall receive” interview with myself. As always this interview will be conducted by Mr. S, himself.

Mr. S: Your photographs are full of serenity, whimsy, and optimism. Would you describe these sentiments as an integral part of your worldview?

Mr. Smith: Amazing how you get right to the heart of the matter. Although I personally feel that it’s UP to melancholia and that profound thought and wisdom is intimately linked to our sense of mortality, my photographs represent a positive response to all my fears anxiety and limitations. They are me at my very finest.

Mr. S: Do you mean that if one meets you, you are not as gentle, forthcoming, or positive as your photographs?

Mr. Smith: Absolutely! My photographs are me at my transcendent best. They are all I want to be, but never realize. They are intimately entwined with the me that resides in this world, but somehow are much better. Unfortunately, I am a person who is somewhat controlled by my fears, anxiety and sense of fallibility in the world. I try to be a better person, father, friend, husband, but I often fail miserably. I am never as good a person as the people I expose in my photographs.

Mr. S: But you often say that your photographs represent a wide spectrum of humanity, which include fear, anger, sadness, etc. Is this true?

Mr. Smith: You are correct. But somehow the whole range of human experience, ranging from anger to joy, fear to happiness, etc., is an acceptable and downright positive attribute in my pictures. It is nothing to be fearful of. It represents what it means to be a small person in a very large universe and one’s reaction to forces much larger than ourselves. How could one not be anxious, as we are finite, small creatures, surrounded by a large emptiness? People seem to need some resolution to this quandary. I stand at the threshold, where fear cannot and perhaps should not be eliminated.

Yet unfortunately, I cannot accept my own personal failing in my dealings with people. I am critical and at times destructive. As a photographer I succeed, as a person I am prone to constant failure.

Mr. S: Why do you think you make photographs in the first place?

Mr. Smith: Ironically I think the making of photographs resolves two issues for me. First, is the creation of a beautiful artifact. It is the end result of my co-production with the world around me. It is an integration of me with the marvelous world around us. Secondly, and perhaps most importantly, I think there is so much feeling welled up in my soul that needs to be expressed and let out into the world. I feel that I have so much to tell, so much to teach, so much I want to help people realize their potential. I want people to realize the powers for good that reside deep within us all. I guess in conclusion there is always also a need for affirmation and therefore love from the world around me.

Mr. S: In conclusion, many of your answers seem to raise more questions than they answer?

Mr. Smith: I guess it is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers. Thank you until next time.

After consuming great quantities of turkey, I thought perhaps its time to ruffle a few feathers and take a walk down a very lonely road. You see, I feel if you look hard and true, most times a photograph is extremely revealing, not only of the subject but also more importantly of the person who took the picture. Alternatively, photography at a certain level is also a place where many people can get very comfortable, lie a little or a lot, and reveal absolutely nothing. This too is very telling. It is a medium much like fashion that can portend a great deal but ultimately can signify nothing.

For me one of the problems with photography started with the strobe and the use of artificial light. With the use of artificial light, primarily strobes for still photography; one could create great amounts of instantaneous light anywhere, and remove themselves from the quirkiness and variety of natural light, which by its very nature has enormous limitations. Instead of working within these limitations photographers chose a constant light source that is true from minute to minute or perhaps even from year to year.

No longer did one have to deal with the lack of light or learn how to use these limitations to their advantage, or even have to wait for the right moment. Over the years photographers have chosen to move away from a natural light source in order to control the light. One could simply override these limitations by avoiding them altogether. Move away from a natural light source, control the light with something artificial and avoid dealing with a real world that has feelings, moods, and even rain.

Instead of becoming sensitive to the world you know, photographers in droves, like sheep abandoned their interplay with life and how it is revealed by the natural light at that particular moment for consistency, ease, and in many cases boredom.

Many photographers will choose this control and a modicum of success over the risk of failure, but they also have lost the promise of great reward.

In the end a photographer may feel they have achieved freedom by having the use of artificial light and its ability to cast its shadow on even the most mundane and darkest of corners. But have you gained more than you have lost? There is something wonderful about seeing a room or an interior place that is lit or unlit by natural light. One can only know the true spirit of a place by how it is illuminated naturally. This is a gift of God.  A picture is a revelatory moment, which helps reveal a unique and sometimes special place at a particular moment in history.

Next came the seamless background to go along with the strobe. This is an enormous piece of paper or canvas, which helps avoid having to place a subject in context. It is a way of avoiding composition and dealing with the environment. I can hear all the arguments now. People have used backdrops forever; they have helped with long exposures, etc. Look at the work of Edward Weston or Irving Penn. They regularly used backdrops in their photographs.  In the hands of a truly talented photographer perhaps this is fine. There is a particular reason or choice in their decision-making. It is not a default setting. For the mass of photographers the use of a backdrop is a shortcut. It is a way of looking good without too much risk. Take out your strobe and your seamless; use them in your pictures, and out pops a consistently good, professional picture that is utterly banal and many times boring. It generally reveals nothing.

On occasion if the subject being photographed is special, wonderful things can happen, but for the most part the use of artificial light and the seamless help the photographer hide behind a veneer of professionalism. But in this process nothing has been risked, nothing has been revealed and your mask is in tact, exposed only to those who care to look deeper.

And lastly, now comes Photoshop, which is changing photography from an interchange with life into a studio experience in one form or another. If you don’t like the background, change it. If you don’t like the expression, change it. Change everything. Change the colors, the light, the clothes, etc., until photography is on its merry mechanical way of being a form of illustration.

So photographers have slowly lost control under the guise of getting more. They have slowly given up the great gift of a meaningful and spiritual interchange with this glorious world, for consistency, ease, control, and most importantly a fear of failure.

All those appurtenances you have added to your toolbox so you would not fail have in fact failed you in the end. What has been lost is a way to succeed naturally. I am fearful some photographers have lost their way.

If you risk a great deal and you expose your hidden self by your experiences and your reaction to the world you encounter, you will be telling all those who care to look and listen the small truths that are hidden inside you.

In the early spring of 1980 while living in Wales, I found myself making a slow turn into a very isolated and primitive part of the north Wales coast. There was a small hand-painted, weathered sign saying simply, Bod-Fin.

As usual, the curiosity killing this cat, I turned down a long circuitous drive, which ended with numerous abandoned looking medieval buildings. Everything seemed quiet and recently abandoned, but there was a strong smell of life everywhere. It was obviously a working farm, but without any animals, people, etc. Finally I knocked on the farmhouse door and an elderly woman invited me into her kitchen, where I told her my story, and without any hesitation she welcomed me into a house, a farm and a history I will never forget.

I returned to this magical place many times over the next week to learn more about the isolated yet remarkable life of this farm. It was right out of a Charles Dickens novel. The woman, her husband and brothers ran this old, ancient farm, surrounded by a world that was leaping into corporate jets, masters of the universe, cell phones, etc. I loved this place. I loved its smells, its history, its pace, and even its manure.

It turned out that early in the morning, hundreds of animals of all kinds were let loose to go their merry way. There were cattle, goats, sheep, pigs, turkeys, donkeys, chickens, and every variety of domestic cat, dogs, birds which were set free from their overnight lodgings to wander slowly but surely into their designated pastures. There were no tethers, leashes, guides, but rather simply open gates and on cue either by a long familiar history or one leading another, these animals walked slowly to their appointed places. But more remarkable, and what I truly loved was the eventide.

Sharply at five as if a whistle were blown, the slow precession began. All the animals in a chaotic yet organized procession would slowly return to their appointed places. There were hundreds of animals walking across each other’s paths, nodding appropriately at intersections, mingling, stopping to chat and then continuing on their way. If these animals didn’t look like a goat they probably would have been people. Chickens were catching free rides on the cattle’s backs, donkeys and pigs were crossing each other’s paths and in the midst of this I would stand. It was the crossroads. Day after day I would watch, mesmerized by what I was seeing. There were no people, only animals and yet all seemed well.

This was obviously the true precursor to free range. Everything mixed at a timely place. It was total organized chaos, hysterically funny and wonderful.

For whatever reason this urban boy had already learned to love gardens and the rural life. I had photographed many farms, but never one like this. I had also begun my fascination with chickens and turkey’s. I have no idea where this came from or what this meant.

Throughout my journey’s to primitive or rural environs I found myself attracted to the curious and whimsical qualities of chickens and turkeys. There seems to be at least one chicken photograph from every place I wandered in my early life. So I watched amazed and in wonder at the animal kingdom of Bod-Fin. It was a place that nurtured animals, not people. It was a farm right on the majestic Irish Sea, whose farmers had never ventured into the water nor learned how to swim. It was a farm of medieval curiosities.

It was if the animals ran the place and the people were there to nurture their needs and wants.

On this eve of Thanksgiving, I thought it appropriate to not only give thanks to the life I have lived and seen, but to the turkey itself, on its way from one place to another.

My life is like this farm. I am happy in the way of the old, yet I live in the ways of the new. I see value in the past, yet I am immersed in the life of the present.

On Thanksgiving I hope I can find a way, like all the animals at Bod-Fin, to find my way in the world, through the chaos, back to the house and family that I call home.

Happy Thanksgiving to you all.

It all began with my sister, ultimately the less rebellious of the two of us. It must have started because of the total anxiety we felt at the hands of our parents, and the ways this nervousness manifested itself at a young age. For my sister, there were many acts of rebellion in her youth; running away, her choice of boyfriends, her marriage, etc., but overall her life was a resounding yes to my parent’s expectations.

Today, although my sister does not have the financial resources of my parent’s, she represents eloquently their ideals and their interests. She is them at their very finest. She is at peace with our parents, while I am not sure what I feel. I am very proud and very much like my parents, yet even to this day, some forty-five years after their deaths, I am still angry and defiant and in my fashion alternately saying yes and no.

When both my sister and I were very young (I probably around six or seven and she around eleven or twelve) I remember hearing in the next room, which was her bedroom, a tumultuous banging into the pillow for many minutes and then suddenly coming to a complete stop. I remember seeing her do this on occasion with no particular rhythm, rather a violent swaying of her up and down into the pillow.

I figured this was either an attempt to knock some sense into her head, or her anxious ritual before sleep. I remember this very well, and feel it obviously displayed the totally neurotic ADD, DDD, EFG family we were. It obviously worked because after an energetic half hour of head banging, my sister would abruptly stop and fall deep into an exhausted sleep.

What is to be noted here is a very important point. My sister was moving her head up and down into the pillow as if proclaiming a giant YES! It seems to me today, although tormented and anxious, she was happy with her life and even in her anxiety, was willing and able to affirm it, albeit violently.

Sometime later, for some reason that I cannot remember (maybe they were painting my room) I was moved into my sister’s room for a week or two.

This was the room of my older sister where I was frequently banished and with whom we seemed so many years apart. She was much older, more vivacious, outgoing, and social. I was a loner, quiet and serious. I envied her at times, and I would have liked to have been more like her, but I wasn’t.

Anyway, for those two weeks something happened to me. I was only a few feet away from the maelstrom, and through some miraculous telepathy learned and then associated my sister’s habit. In fact, I think I probably joined her in her bedtime ritual. Now my parents had two head banging misfits on their hands. I am sure we were brought to every doctor to confirm our physical well being. No one would dare express that mentally that we had a few loose screws. They were told we would outgrow this (which we did) and that we were just nervous anxious children that needed activity and socializing to solve all our problems. After forty-five years of therapy I wish it was that simple.

Finally after some weeks I went back to my own room to continue the party in solitude. Some years later I realized that although I had learned my lessons well from my sister, it had taken a new form with me.

Instead of moving up and down into the pillow, I had learned to move my head in a violent, defiant sway back and forth. I had learned to express myself and perhaps my anger with a head banging NO!

I do not remember this exercise in sleep preparation went on for, but I think it lasted a few years. Finally it dissipated into a general free-floating anxiety and hypochondria that filled every pore of my body.

To this day my sister has learned not only to be at peace with our past, but is able to look with great admiration and longing for the years we spent growing up. I on the other hand am still clearly ambivalent. I miss my parents greatly and I valued and loved my childhood, but still there is anger and defiance in me as if part of me is still swaying uncontrollably into the pillow with a defiant NO!

Terry Falk was my assistant, printer, and friend for many years.

We first met when we were both young; me as his teacher, and he as one of the smartest students of photography I have ever met. He is a true New Englander, spare, refined, born on the Connecticut coast, raised on the water, but with a complicated and somewhat tormented life story, like us all.

His older brother was the darling of the family. Education and praise were lavished on him while Terry a non-athletic loner, who was interested in photography, was more or less ignored. But to me like many things in life, the true gem of the family was left to tarnish and was somewhat forgotten.

As I mentioned I came into Terry’s life while he was in college, and for over 20 years he assisted me, printed my work, and together we had many wonderful adventures as we traveled around the world together.

But Terry’s best and most endearing quality to me, was his sense of humor and loyalty. Together we laughed our way through our adventures. It is this part of my life that I miss greatly. I miss Terry’s companionship and his always-brilliant insight into the state of photography and its participants.

In the early 80′s when we really got humming, Terry and I would travel together on assignment to photograph the chieftains of business. In those days I shot with a small 35mm Leica rangefinder, dress in a coat and tie, with a few rolls of film in my pockets, no lights and only one assistant. We would travel together, both wearing our ties and jackets, looking both like tourists, but always having a lot of fun.

I can think of at least two occasions when Terry saved my life. Once in London as I was taking a picture, I was so oblivious to the traffic, I almost walked right into an oncoming car, and he quickly pulled me back to safety. The other, on top of a building in Paris where I almost fell off the ledge, only to be saved at the last minute by Terry’s quick hands.

After the shoots we would celebrate with a beautiful lunch or dinner and laughed at all the crazy places and adventures we had gotten into that day.

In those days I began to experiment. Italian and Flemish Renaissance painting had always influenced me. Often there would be a layering of subjects. The background would always compliment the foreground. The composition was perfect and figures were placed as balancing acts to the main subject. I noticed there was often a secondary figure in the background. I loved this. It added complexity and most of all balance to the composition. Since I was shooting with a horizontal format (unlike the square format I use mostly today) I found I often needed something to balance the composition in the frame. My images always felt like they needed more. I wanted to add more complexity, to layer them, to always have some hidden surprise. With this need, along came Terry. On the shoots it usually was the subject (usually a male CEO), Terry and myself. We all looked like the Bobbsey Twins.

On more and more occasions I would feel like something was missing and I would use Terry as a model in the background. This almost became a standing joke, because he always knew what I was looking for and was wise and intelligent enough to give it to me.

He knew my work better than anyone alive, and it always showed in the photographs. To this day, some 25 years later, I still often place figures throughout the frame, but it was Terry who initiated this.

It is kind of fitting that this wise soul would be in my pictures. He taught me a great deal and he seemed to appreciate me and my work more than almost anyone since. Even though he often was in the background, he is often in the foreground of my thoughts.