It all started completely unexpectedly. Right after dinner, standing on the corner of Park and Chapel Streets in New Haven Connecticut. I was getting ready to say my goodbyes to my friends Rob and Lee when as if struck by lightening, I became completely dumbfounded. I don't know how else to describe this sudden overwhelming title-wave of emotion that overcame me. I stood before them unable to speak almost catatonic. I knew that this feeling although physical in its results, derived not from some physical malady, but rather from some deep cortex in my brain. I was totally overcome with fear and trembling. I stood before them as if I was watching myself from afar, completely self-conscious of myself so that for a few long seconds I was physically unable to speak or move. I simply stood there watching myself. I was finally able to gain control of myself, whatever that means, and quickly said my goodbyes, but from that moment on that abrupt breakdown of my person completely changed me forever. I went back to my small apartment on Parks St. feeling terrified and in a complete stupor. I had been anxious my whole life, so severe anxiety was nothing new to me. I battled with anxiety daily but this was a step into something way beyond my normal free-floating anxiety. Without probably realizing it I was standing on a dangerous precipice of a complete mental breakdown. From that moment on, my interior mental life has never been the same. I needed help. I first went to a psychiatrist who was completely unhelpful if not destructive. He was distant, cool, rigid, and fearful to me, and seeing him only seemed to exacerbate my problems. I often confronted myself in his office, finding myself unable to speak, sitting for long stretches, voiceless. He prescribed a severe anti-anxiety medicine Thorazine which completely exhausted me and I became completely useless. I stopped this medicine almost immediately and looked for a new physician. I don't know how I had the courage to leave him. This seems strange as he was so unhelpful but I have a hard time leaving someone even if they are destructive. Sometime later I found Dr. Millman. And so . . . began my slow recovery from the abyss. For almost forty years Dr. Millman has helped me help myself. Through this long process of self-discovery I have found a true and lasting confidant. What exactly has happened over these past years is very hard to explain but let me begin with the obvious. Firstly, I became a photographer. This may sound easy but it went against the very fiber of my upbringing. He helped me allow this part of my life to flourish. There have been so many roadblocks along the way that he helped me fight off and allow me to focus my energies on my work. But most importantly I began to understand myself and my feelings. How I thwart myself from succeeding, how I…

  In the early nineties, when Terry, my longtime assistant, printer, and friend was in the darkroom printing one of my photographs, I suddenly heard the door open and out walked Terry, print tray in hand with a huge grin on his face. He looked at me and said "You've done it again.  Did you know you were doing this?" I looked at him quizzically as I had no idea what he was talking about, walked over to him and looked at the print he was holding in the tray. He asked me again if I noticed anything unusual about the print, and other than thinking that it looked like another magical print produced by his skilled hands, I noticed nothing unusual.  I was still trying to figure out if I even liked the picture. Finally Terry said to me, "You do this over and over again and you're not even aware of it."  With that comment, he pointed to the white painted trees and showed me that they aligned perfectly with the neighboring field. He said that in many of my photographs the relationship between people and the landscape, or objects within the landscape are in perfect harmony.  They meet or juxtapose perfectly.  Their relationship in the frame is sympathetic and exacting.  "How do you do this?"  he exclaimed. I looked at him because Terry was one of the wisest and most observant viewers of photography I had ever known and my response was, "I simply don't know." All I can say is that when I release the shutter, in a fleeting burst of emotional energy, at that brief moment everything within the frame feels right. If it is a landscape, I have moved around until I have found the singular right spot, where intuitively I feel connected to the place. It is not an intellectual or conceptual endeavor.  It is a primordial quest for tranquility and resolve.  Everything in my viewfinder at that moment is perfectly aligned and just at that very instant, there is a driving powerful need and desire to press the shutter and capture that fleeting moment. It is so ironic that this primal, sexual energy that is so powerful and energetic, can release and produce something that is so peaceful, composed and elegant. But that is my belief.  Photography is a response to the world, not a reflection of it.  It is an attempt to bring order out of chaos, understanding out of confusion, wisdom out of ignorance and lastly, beauty out of despair.  It is my attempt to help us all find the right place at the right time so we can, once again, as a culture move forward in harmony.

  As a young boy in boarding school, Thursday mornings were the day to be feared.  Of all the days for this to happen, just as the weekend was approaching and there was a possibility of free time, Thursday inspection occurred. Every hall in every dorm had it's docent, usually a senior who was dreaded for his authority.  Cross him the wrong way and you'd be polishing his shoes for days. In our small enclosed world, he was the boss, but nothing was as bad as Thursday mornings.  Every Thursday immediately following breakfast was room inspections.  From every infraction came an hour of hard labor to be performed on the weekend before you could leave campus. So on every Thursday, Warren Van Deventer, a minister's son, with no remorse for his cruelty and ruthlessness, would carefully and very deliberately put on his white gloves and with a steel glint in his eyes mosey on down the hall and start his weekly inspection. If he had chores he wished done he was ever more eager to find failure in this useless brood of no good youth.  If he needed his shoes shined, his windows cleaned, his floor polished, this was his chance to find some free slave labor to be at his beck and call. In he would walk into my tiny cubby hole of a room with revenge in his eyes, his gloves glistening white as he smoothed his finger over each and every surface of the room.  After every pass of his finger on a surface he would check his white glove to see if there was even a slight shadow of dust.  If he had any doubts off to the window he would go to doubly check his immaculate gloves for any sign of disdain. Each time a surface was polished with his glove, if he were to find the slightest dust or dirt an hour of hard labor was bestowed upon you.  Woe to you if you were sloppy.  You'd be working all weekend. My first few months of school I was never without some hours of labor to fulfill, but after sometime, I learned my lessons well, and I was ready for his onslaught. I dared him to touch my desk, my closet, my floor, anything and find a sign of dust.  I was my mother's son and cleaning had become one of my few triumphs. But the real test, that distinguished me from my contemporaries was my bedmaking.  I could have been a general in the marines if they advanced you purely on your bedmaking skills.  There was not a ripple in the blankets.  The sheets were new, very tight and crisp.  The hospital corners were immaculate. So on Thursday I stood proudly by my bed waiting for that fitful moment when Warren Van Deventer took his white gloves off and put his hand deeply into his pocket and pulled out a new shiny American quarter. He took this quarter and dropped it in the…