It happened in New Haven, Connecticut in the Fall of 1972. Twenty years after my mother's illness and withdrawl. I had just made my first 8x10 prints from my first contact sheet, from my first photography class. I remember walking up the stairs to my cockroach infested, but cute apartment in New Haven and looking at these photographs of people in New Haven, and thinking to myself, I like these pictures, but who...really took them? These pictures could not have been taken by me. They are too strong too direct and definitely too clear. Who is this person who could take such pictures? It is not the fearful, sickly, confused person I knew myself to be. These pictures turned out to be the beginning of my way out. They were the doorway to my interior. It is quite perplexing but photography saved my life from total failure. I know it didnt look this from the outside. I had gone to good schools, had family wealth, was married, and all things probably looked fine from the outside. Appearance is deceptive. On the inside a machiavellian dwarf had resided in me. It was determined to battle with me every step of the way. It could rise on any occasion and confront me with fear, loathing and sickness. It kept me subdued and fragile while a stronger voice in me was kept totally under control. So in the Fall of 1972, I began the journey of understanding of who I really am , what I stand for, and to begin the process of slowly ridding myself of the sins of the dwarf. Painfully and very slowly the person I saw in those first pictures has emerged. Often slipping back but re-emerging into a stronger, more direct person. Photography was always safe from my inner dwarf. It strongly took my hand and soul and has continually shown me the way to reunite me with myself.

So where was I? It seems quite ironic that what I most remember, what I can literally mark as one of the major turning points in my life, began and ended in the summer of 1952. Peculiarly because, as I mentioned last week, camp for the next eleven years was nothing but a blur, a time to forget. In 1952 when I was five, we still lived in a modest middle class house on a great street with sidewalks, and other children up and down the street. I can remember being extremely happy, and playing capture the flag with neighbors, and enjoying the community life. For whatever reasons, my mother decided that there was a camp, a farm actually in Cape Cod called Lake Farm. Which would be a great place for me to spend the summer. It turned out she was correct. It was a small co-ed camp with beautiful college girl counselors, and a gentle place where we all tended to animals and each other. I don't remember many particulars (I was only 5 remember), but I do remember a few things. For some reason I seemed to excel at everything. I could run faster, act maturely be responsible, so much so, that I remember being continually placed with the older campers. I got to go canoeing with them and my destiny seemed suited to a life of fulfillment. I was happy, people seemed to like me and to place the cherry on top of the sundae, I remember on the trainride home having my favorite girl kiss me. Heaven was found somewhere in Connecticut. Somewhere, sometime, somehow shortly after returning home from camp that first summer, it happened. My mother got sick. I can remember going to the hospital to pick her up and bring her home. I did not know what happened (at age 31 she woke up with breast cancer) and came home a failed woman. You see, my family was in the fashion business. Appearance was all. My mother not only lost her breast, she lost her looks, her allure, her appeal and came home deeply depressed, and went to bed for a year. She tried, but couldn't dote and adore her little boy who loved her. He was left and felt abandoned. It is at this point, that not only did my mother's life change, but mine did as well. Later in that year, I was playing the driveway and by mistake (maybe) cut my whole arm open on a piece of chrome attached to a car I was running by. It severed an artery and my mother, luckily was home and rushed me to the hospital. Finally I got her attention and she was there when I needed her. This was The Beginning and The End, all wrapped up into one year. The next summer, back in camp I was not the same little boy. I no longer won races. I was demoted and placed back with children of my own age,…

I'm having a really hard time this week writing about what I want to, my wife Leslie, "the force that through the green fuse drives my flower," but I'm worried I may be straying too far afield from photography. Of course, if one were interested in me personally, then this would all be good grist for the mill; but, if one is interested in the photographs (the text, as they say in the new vernacular) maybe I am straying too far from the source. I try to assume that my interior house has many doors you could enter through, and still find your way to the heart of the matter. This blog has become so peculiar to me, because even though I am very public in my pictures, I am actually very private in my deepest thoughts. But onward and upward we go on this wonderfully dreary Tuesday morning. So two weeks ago, my wife, my daughter, and myself went off to Spain, Barcelona in particular, for a vacation. Essentially, the reason for our trip was an exhibition of my work in a museum in Teruel, about four hours from Barcelona, which was wonderful and very special, but this escapade will wait for another time. What I really want to talk about is Leslie, the ying to my yang. She is quiet to my notoriousness, focused and hardworking, while I am lazy, and love most to eat and nap. Where we most compliment each other though, is in our sense of humor. You see, I think myself quite funny, a modern day Woody Allen with a camera. And Leslie, to my great despair, has no sense of humor, I mean none, nada, nichts. Here I am, making jokes, trying my best to be funny, and it falls on flat ears.  She reminds me of a dog who looks quizzically at you with a sideward glance, trying to figure out what planet this person has come from. One would think that this lack of simpatico would be a problem, but in fact, without her realizing it, she is my straight-man. If I am Hardy, she must be Laurel. I used to be able to capture this in film. We have now been married almost twenty years, and it is time to start again with my Leslie book. Harry Callahan had Eleanor, Steiglitz had Georgia O'Keefe, and I have my Leslie. So back to our wonderful hotel in Barcelona, which Leslie had found and organized in her special way. We were in our beautiful five-star hotel, and I was so happy because the bed was so comfortable. I could nap with a spiritual satisfaction. Why bother, when you are a few hundred feet from Gaudi's Sagrada Familia, to see it in person when you can see it perfectly well in your dreams. Now Leslie is a woman who needs to blow her hair. There is always this constant hum in the background, morning or evening, of hair being blown this way and…