Death ends a life, but not a relationship, which struggles on in the survivor's mind toward some resolution . . .  Robert Anderson I Never Sang for My Father   You can see it in many of my pictures. It's there below the surface, residing often in the very molecules that comprise the image. Deep below the whimsy, and the joy is a loneliness, a slow whiff of sadness and an everlasting melancholy. Although I am shouting yes to life, to goodness, to beauty, and exalting on the wonders of our existence, I am forever fighting a looming large and very dark presence that is saying No. It's as if my pictures are my response. They are my strong defiance, even my "ruthless determination" to refuse or accept the verdict that I am a large No. My response to these very deep lingering feelings tells a personal story that was only partially played out in reality. The pictures tell a story of triumph, joy, and are filled with hope, when in my own personal history this partial triumph over despair, this anger that fueled my determination to find a small yes and overcome this great No, was only played out in a small office, deeply alone with only the help of one doctor in New Haven Connecticut over many many troubling and confusing years.   It ended and started one very late morning in the early Spring of 1968. I was home for Spring Break in my junior year of college, and for some reason my father and I were alone together in New York City for a day. I don't remember where it started but somewhere, some morning, outside of our Manhattan apartment my father got very angry at me. You would think that by this time in my life I could handle his disappointment and annoyance at me, but even at this ripe old age of twenty-one I still was unsure where to place his disappointment with me. Was I to accept his stated and unstated view of me, or was I to fight back with all the rage that was lodging in every anxious and fearful sinew in my body. By now I had excelled at things he knew nothing about. I was an A student, an academic, a boy of confused and smoldering ideas with feelings that had no place to go, especially where they belonged. I was engaged to be married into a world somewhat distinct and removed from my own, but still I felt unacceptable and unequal to this diminutive man, who remained a very dark towering presence standing mightily over me. For a few hours after breakfast while I tagged along with him as he did some errands, my anger smoldered and churned within me. For as many years as I could remember I had never once stood up to this man, fought him fairly in battle. The odds had always been on his side. Today I was going to change that.…

  It's staring me right in the face, this beautiful grey box with a silver chrome jewel inside it. It's precise, elegant, and very refined, yet all last night I had trouble sleeping thinking about it. You would have thought that this magical grey box would have calmed my fears and given me a restful and blissful evening but no, this little grey box required two valiums to knock out my fears. Yesterday I paid a great deal of money for it and I'm not even sure I want it. I walked out of the store where I purchased this box and began to tremble, but here I am and I don't think I have any intention of returning it, but I'm not even sure I will ever use it. What a confusing state I'm in! Yesterday afternoon I bought my first digital camera, a small Leica M240, that looks almost identical to the M6 I used to use, and even the M4 I used when I was in my twenties. The only difference is that one was film and the other has a card that records about 400 images before I have to change it. I wish it were that simple, and maybe it is but last night I tried to keep my soul in check. I felt like it was ready to abandon me, reject me for my reckless faithlessness. Film has been my confidant, my beloved, for forty-five years and why have I even been thinking of abandoning it even if it's only very slightly. For me the newfangled digital world is something I mostly abhor, and yet for some time I have ruminated and thought that if I ever was to shoot a digital frame this new masterpiece of a camera with it's perfect 35mm format would be my choice. So what do I do as soon as I make a little bit of money, I go out and spend it on a camera I'm not sure I want. Oh what a state I'm in. Here I am at this very tiny crossroad with its various ups and downs. A person who is computer illiterate, who emails almost never, who only reads printed books and newspapers, and tries as hard as possible to avoid the digital world has with great reluctance bought a camera that begins to unite me with a world I want nothing to do with. Here I am, a person who does not like retouching, compositing, or even looking at the frame until the image is developed, usually days later, buying an instant camera. Here I am a person who does not like most digital reproduction as it looks sterile, lifeless, and often very cool, buying a small digital camera. And lastly why would I buy a camera I probably could have borrowed from Leica to test to see if I felt comfortable with it before I went out and purchased it? The answer to these and most other questions concerning this camera…