On a hot, humid, overbearing Summer's day, in late July of 1967, I was standing in my cubby hole of a booth, working my Summer job collecting quarters for the Governor on the Atlantic Beach bridge on Long Island. I was dutifully filling in my time. There was a lull in the traffic going to the beach, and I was able to escape for a few moments, my normal lusting after the beautiful girls driving by in convertibles. They were off to have a fun filled day of lying in the sand while bronzing themselves to the cool sounds of "Cousin Brucie." Everything was as it should be. America was innocent, yet preeminent. The world seemed fun and full of adventure. My life was filled with girls, cherry pie and coconut cake, and the issues that perplexed me were simple and immediate. All of the sudden my reverie was broken by the sounds of blaring police sirens. There must have been twenty black, unmarked sedans that appeared out of nowhere, all blaring their sirens and in rapid order pulled up to the station house that was adjacent to the tollbooths. Immediately, as my hearing was slowly returning to normal, out popped at least twenty to thirty serious looking men, wearing FBI jackets, all running with guns extended into the station house. What an entrance! Oh my God! Nothing like this had happened before. I was sure I must have done something wrong. My lusting over the girls must have become public. They were here to arrest me for indecent thoughts. I couldn't think of anything else I had done wrong. On a few occasions my counting had been slightly off by 50 cents at the end of the day, but this couldn't be the reason to send so many agents. My 50-cent discrepancy couldn't be worth all this trouble. I promised myself I would personally pay whatever I was off. It couldn't be more than one or two dollars for the whole summer. As I was preparing to be pulled away in handcuffs, the FBI agents along with some elderly toll collectors came out of the building. I noticed that all these permanent (non-summer) toll collectors were being handcuffed. Some FBI agents were walking down the long expanse of collection booths and were pulling out all the full-time collectors. When they came by my booth, they barely looked at me and kept walking. At the end of the hour, they had collected almost all the men and a few women who were full-time and led them to a van in handcuffs and departed as rapidly as they came. I had been spared for all the things I thought I had done wrong. I seemed to have survived whatever happened and finally was able to take a breath and go back to eating my chicken salad sandwich. When I finally got off work at the end of the day, the sergeant inside the station told me what had happened. It seemed…

"Dost thou know me, fellow?" - King Lear One of the more wonderful mantras of the fashion world exclusive of, Give it to me baby, or Work it!, and lastly, It's genius, is the ongoing and never ending search for Attitude.  Throughout my long involvement with photography, I have often heard art and fashion directors praise or diminish models and photographers for not evoking or embracing The Right Attitude. The Right Attitude changes every year, so photographers, models and art directors are falling over each other to stay current, but then again not too current as to be out of touch. They have to find just the right amount of smirk, aloofness and snobbery to be desirous, but not off-putting. This must become so exhausting. It seems that both photography in the fashion and art worlds over the last quarter century has struggled to find a way for the subject to appear disinterested and totally blank, and yet have people clamor for more. Vacuousness is declared important, and in fashion having the model appear inapproachable and disinterested, with just the right mix of attitude, makes her cool, trendy, appropriate for the minute, rooted in a specific time (our time) and space. I suppose all of this attitude is suppose to be sexy, as lying beneath everything in our popular culture is a subterranean ooze of sex. She is supposedly approachable, yet unapproachable, desirous, yet appearing neutered and sexless. Cool and suave in their demeanor and appearing in and out of love with themselves. The Attitude is all about me and how one appeals and appears cool in this popular world. All of this is why I only partially embrace the photographic world to which I belong. I am a member, yet I often feel like a far distant relative. I love the medium and its history, but mostly I do not embrace its contemporary and ever cool results. So here lies the conundrum. Photography is interested in women being other than themselves. The culture idolizes celebrities that play roles. The fashion world needs models to exude something, that at it's best, is only a distant cousin to their true being. The art world loves to create an environment, like a move set, so everyone can role-play and take on a new identity, and in the end I am left with a completely different impulse. I am not interested in a role people can play, but rather I am interested in looking deep into the soul of the subject. I am interested in the right body language that does not express the right attitude, but rather expresses the uniqueness of that individual, the more original the better. Often models are at first totally confused by me. I tell them to stop modeling and to try to just be themselves, and let me photograph the real person and not the one with attitude. One time while shooting in Paris, I was photographing a beautiful, young model, who after a few hours began to…

I can't believe this is happening. I assumed I had the monopoly on psycho-somatic illness, heavily tinged with hypochondria, and surrounded by a perpetual mist of free floating anxiety. I also thought I was the only one who could turn all these fears and tremblings into a real manifestation, but oh no, I have now been co-opted by my very own wife, Leslie. For years and years I thought I had sole possession of a terrible fearful manifestation of my anxieties. One morning, more than 30 years ago, I woke up with a start and felt this enormous protrusion, this edema that had puffed and swelled throughout the night on my lip, so that by the morning the left side of my face was beginning to look like the Stay-Puff man. My lips were so bulbous; they would make Angelina Jolie jealous. The more I worried about this, the more intense the swelling became. I had gone from a relatively benign looking 35 year old, into a minor version of the Elephant Man. Over the years I made frequent trips to allergists, but to no real avail. They ruled out food and other allergies, leaving me with what was left, ironically the most appropriate diagnosis, fear and anxiety. I never knew for 30 years when the next episode would appear. I'd lie in bed, in dread, on hot sweaty nights (as sweat and heat seemed to exacerbate the condition) that I would wake up in a start with some enormous welt on my face or my body. Finally, after years, this particular torment seemed to run it's course and for the last number of years I seem to have exorcised this particular plague from my system. But now, out of the blue, Leslie has been struck by the same ailment. Her lips and mouth have started to swell out of control. This couldn't be sympathy pain, because she had felt no sympathy for me, only annoyance that I couldn't let the ailment go. I had soaked it for all it's worth. But now, even my peculiar and original psychosomatic illness has been transferred to my wife. I pray that this condition will pass quickly from Leslie, as she seems to handle the situation far more gracefully than I have in the past. As I lay in bed, I obsessed over the thought that I might receive what I most fear. I pray that the curse that has found its way it Leslie's lips will not find its way once again to yours truly simply with a kiss.

As the world dances foolishly along embracing styrofoam, sheetrock, laminates, plastic and more plastic,  I remain firmly and devoutly rooted in the ancient love and lore of wood. I love the smell of fresh cut wood, the peculiarities of each of it's species and mostly the framing and shaping of it's vast variety into a special enclosure called a home. I also love wood furniture. As it slowly ages it only gets more majestic, with a deeper patina, exposing it's organic history with pride and grace. What piece of molded plastic ages so beautifully? Besides loving the deep bowels of a home referred to as it's basement, throughout my photographic career, I have been attracted to garrets. I am not referring to a modern day attic in houses built since the 1950's. I am referring to a majestic home, manor house, cathedral, or ancient structure, where hidden in the upper floors among the thick wooden trusses, that criss-cross to shape and hold the basic structure is on occasion a truly holy and private place. It is here where the oak, chestnut, or fir braces, from a hidden nearby forest were felled to provide support. These braces criss-cross and form elaborate patterns that have always intrigued me. It is the ancient basic, unadorned part of the house that remains pure and undecorated. It contains the history of the house and if I find the right space, I feel equally at home in these garrets as I do in the basements. Throughout the years as I have scouted locations throughout the world, and I am shown the often magnificent decorated spaces below, I will often ask to look at the forbidden place to everyone except the owners, the garret. I am often met with hesitation, but on occasion I sometimes gain the owners or caretakers trust and find myself climbing legions of stairs up, up into the upper recesses and nooks of a creaky old building. I am climbing closer and closer to something hidden, private and if I am lucky, glorious. I have reached the pinacle of the structure and feel comforted by the strength and sturdiness of the building. On rare occasions, I am in a holy, private, powerful place, with a strong presence, unknown to most, interesting to only a few. It is often very hard if not impossible to make picture there, but I love it just the same. These are often very cramped and small spaces and only on rare occasions, despite my many years of looking do I find the right spot. The pictures I make there today never seem to do justice to the place. But then again, this is a private adventure that takes me climbing, searching, and yearning for something old, mysterious, and transcendent. I am climbing into new territory.