This is a story about my first wife's father Niven Busch, the GRANDfather to my son Jonah. For he was truly grand in every way and like my own father, left his mark imbedded and scattered throughout his seven children and five wives. He was born of wealthy patrician parents and lived in Centre Island, Long Island, New York. He went to Princeton, worked with his cousin Briton Hadden, the co-founder of Time Life with Henry Luce, at The New Yorker, and ultimately (an this is another story) abandoned the East and all its history to become a screenwriter and novelist in California. He became quite a legend writing films like Duel in the Sun, and The Postman Never Rings Twice as well as writing many novels set in California such as California Street, The San Franciscans etc. He was tall and very handsome "looking like a cross between Errol Flynn (a good friend and fellow polo player) and John Huston, and women by the droves were attracted to this handsome, adventurous, smart, cunning man. His life was an enormous adventure, which I became a part of my last two years of high school and remained so for many years. He often confided in me, and even wrote one book with a little help from my father whom he liked. These two giant egos seemed to mesh perfectly as they had different lives in different places. They related and understood each other from afar. Niven was tall and very Western and my father was small Jewish and very Eastern yet these two men were both a force to be reckoned with and despite their deaths their legacy has lived on strongly. Karl Malden once told me his agent told him never to go into a room alone with Niven as he would come out the loser. Niven married the actress Teresa Wright, my first wife's mother and his third wife in 1942 and they were divorced in 1952, when Mary-Kelly and her mother moved to New York City, and Niven and Terrence, Mary-Kelly's brother, stayed in California moving north to Hollister where Niven bought an Apricot and Walnut Ranch and settled in to write novels. After the less than amicable divorce Niven and Teresa barely spoke to each other except to exchange information on the children. He quickly remarried for his forth time to Carmenceta (Cheetah) and had three other children. Cheetah was one of the most special people, and as time went on became one of my closest friends. I was always Rodney Lewis to her and I will get back to her at a later date but for now this is a story about Niven and I must plow ahead. As one might expect from these two very beautiful and handsome people, a movie star and a writer, two children were conceived Terrence, who I always thought was going to be the next John Steinbeck, brilliant handsome and my idol as a child. He was four years…

  It's time for a fourth annual give and take sometimes better known as "ask and you shall receive", and on rare occasions "give it to me Mr. Smith". The interview will take place as always by me, probing ever deeper into the truly eccentric ID of Mr. Smith. Mr. S: For those who have followed your exploits and notations, is it true that you believe self-awareness (an examined life) constitutes a strong part of one's ability to make great photographs?  Mr. Smith: Wow, you get right to the point. Absolutely, yet not necessarily so. I don't mean to be elusive, but this is a very complicated issue. For me I find photography to often be a key to unlock some of the great mysteries about oneself. I can look at photographs and tell a great deal about the person who took the photograph: it's as if the photograph is a guidebook that helps reflect what one feels about the world around them. But I'm not sure self-reflection is necessary for everyone. If your life and your pictures are working well and you are comfortable with your work, so be it.     Mr. S: Can you elaborate further? Mr. Smith: Firstly it is my belief that great photography as well as many of the arts is an expression of deep profound feeling that lingers in one's soul ready and able to be expressed. Some rare people have an avenue directly to these feelings, and need nothing else. This is quite exceptional and often not the case. Most people are unable to express the positive forces that reside within them. They express resistance, frustration, distance, anger, and other repressed feelings in their work. Mr. S: So what is wrong with that. Isn't that simply expressing what they are feeling?  Mr. Smith: Good question, but no. It is an expression of confusion and conflict, which is ok, but generally not that successful photographically. One needs to pour one's heart out, to stand vulnerable, exposed, shouting (even if it's a whisper) a very clear message to those around them to have the world even begin to take notice.     Mr S: I still don't understand why confusion expressed in ones work isn't successful? Mr. Smith: Please remember, I am not talking about the surface, or a purely descriptive expression of something. The surface, i.e. the subject matter, is not in question. I am talking about what resides below the picture. For example I can feel in the photograph how one relates to the subject, whether it be a figure, or a landscape or even a still life. Is a photographer tentative, frightened, aloof, angry, etc. then the viewer consciously or unconsciously feels confusion rather than intimacy. The viewer will feel confused about their feelings. The photograph will remain unresolved, off-putting, and incomplete. If you look at a Rembrandt or a Leonardo painting the subject is emotionally very complicated, but the painter who made those pictures is very clear.     Mr.…

  In the Summer of 2009 I began to notice that I was becoming slightly winded as I went up the stairs, and that a profound fatigue was beginning to nestle into my body. On the next visit to Dr. Wolf in June of 2009, he mentioned I was becoming more anemic and he wanted to see me again in a month. I returned a month later to see that I had become even more anemic, and he informed me it was important to immediately start chemotherapy. As I went through the process of having many tests before treatment, I began to get more and  more fatigued, until when the therapy actually began a week later I was close to needing a blood transfusion. And so it began. I just avoided needing a transfusion as I responded very well to therapy. I began to actually feel much better and I went through a six month course of infusions without losing my humor or my hair. Ironically my hair stubbornly refused to fall out, which was a surprise and good news to all. Over the last few years I have had two more treatments for reasons I won't bore you with but at the moment all is well. As I wonder to myself about the silver lining to my illness, for example, shouldn't it make me re-evaluate my life, or change direction, refocus my efforts, change my priorities, or simply appreciate life for it's beauty every day, I find actually that none of this has happened. But do not feel any sorrow or pity for me because as I have gone through these last years with its many ups and downs, I have realized in most ways I am living the life I want. Sure I would love to have more time to spend with my wife, visit friends more, achieve more acclaim, see my son more, but if I look at my life as a whole, as the life I have actually lived for these past 45 years, I find I am doing what I want. I am living the life I dreamed about, I am resting as much as I need, and most of all I don't think I would change much. Continually reflecting on my decision making with the help of guidance over these past years has helped me choose the life I wanted to live then and not waiting for something traumatic to happen to make that change. So as the world turns, and I along with it, I wonder what I will meet along the way. But with the past that I have chosen and hope for the future, I find myself looking forward to the road I must travel ahead.   Autumn The leaves are falling, falling as from way off, as though far gardens withered in the skies; they are falling with denying gestures. And in the nights the heavy earth is falling from all the starts down into loneliness. We are all falling.…

    It began with a small whimper One morning while in my early fifties I had a simple flu and went to the local clinic for some medicine and comfort. By now I had mostly expunged my dreaded fear of doctors, and although still very trepidatious, I was able to overcome my resistance, and forge my way forward to seeing doctors. It had been some years since my first encounter with doctors and physicals, and I now found my fears of sickness and doctors slowly dissipating. In fact, I was actually beginning to feel myself in good physical and mental health. While at the local, clinic the doctor made a routine check of my blood to evaluate whether the illness was viral or bacterial, and to his surprise my white blood counts were very high. He was quite sure there was something wrong with his machine (as he had had problems in the past) and asked me just to return in a few days to check my condition out further. I'm not exactly sure of what happened next, but I do remember going to see an internist in Manhattan. At this point in my life both in story and reality there was and is no going back. For years I have debated whether I should be telling you what I am about to unfold. For years I've kept this information mostly private except for friends, associates, neighbors, and a few others, so I'm not sure what purpose it serves to disclose it now, but then again I have tried to provide full disclosure. And with this promise as my guide, I am now proceeding to tell all. When the internist evaluated my blood he became quite alarmed and nervous. For an hour he was trying to figure out what malady I might have that wasn't that serious, all the time fearing that I was quite sick. Interestingly enough as I noticed he was getting more and more agitated and probably quite concerned I noticed I was becoming calmer. My blood pressure probably went from off the roof to normal. How could this be? All my life up to this point, I had imagined this moment and dreaded it. These fears had paralyzed me for a good part of my existence, and here it was happening right before me, and as the doctor was becoming more and more concerned I became calmer. How do I explain this? I remember him commenting about how peculiar it was that I should be calm when most people would be so nervous. In conclusion he recommended that I have a biopsy of one of my lymph nodes to see what malignancy I had. My wife (Leslie), and I left his office in a stupor. I was totally confused as I felt fine. Leslie's father who was one of the wisest men I knew, strongly suggested I should not get a biopsy until I met with a hematologist. At this point I began to change…

  As noted in the past, on a peaceful summers midday afternoon in August 1972 my father collapsed in a restaurant in Manhattan while having lunch with some associates. Just like a sudden snap of a falling majestic oak tree, he collapsed and died instantly. For years afterwards I too was sure I was dying without him. I invested in every conceivable malady sure this was the one that would bring me down. I was convinced that the bind that tied me to my father was unbreakable, and that without his strength and power to protect me, I would fail miserably. My early adult life was filled with anxiety and hypochondria, which surrounded my conscious life with failure and sickness. Deep down though in the very private unconscious realm that resides within us all, I was surviving, progressing, and actually flourishing as a photographer. From my early childhood, and especially in my adult life I was terrified of doctors. What might they discover by their probing tools and penetrating eyes on this weak and frail person. Just a thought of visiting a doctor ignited an anxiety attack. For years I simply avoided doctors. I was easily able to talk in front of hundreds of people, but seeing a lone doctor for an annual physical was out of the question. Standing naked and vulnerable in front of a doctor who was more knowledgeable about health and sickness than me was terrifying. Face to face confrontation was simply tortuous. If I let someone in, all they would find would be a failing sick person who was hiding under the veneer of health. For me a visit to a doctor was even more emotionally intimate and revealing than physical intimacy with a woman, although being close and intimate is what I have most craved and needed my whole life. I was filled, even overwhelmed with desire and attraction but so fearful of it. My early adult life was so confused and anxious that real intimacy was mostly a dream and hope rather than a realization. But not in my pictures. It was with my camera that I began to find intimacy. With a camera, I responded to this sick frail person I perceived myself to be, with a strong YES. The pictures were strong, powerful, and invincible.   I see it all now, all so clearly. I truly understand with over forty years of introspection with a doctor in New Haven. I took my mothers love, and it's perceived withdrawal because of her sickness, and I then attached all the guilt I felt in the belief that my strength was the fault. If I remained frail, sick, and did not stick out too far by being overly assertive or strong then everything would be alright. I could keep things under control. I needed her love so badly that I would even take her sickness on to me. I would do anything to keep her alive. and well even if it destroyed and changed…

  Forget dinner in Singapore until next year, we have dinner right here in the good old USA. Everything is as it should be, except for one small minor detail. Instead of turning up the heat, preparing the hearths for Yuletide fires, we are turning on the air conditioning. Except for the bizarre fact that it is hot when it should be cold we are in a frantic pace, to prepare ourselves, our home, and our lives for what lies ahead. This is our early winter, pre spring, Christmas activity. The house is abuzz with activity. All engines are humming along with a nice sonorous tis the season... as we prepare not for Babettes Feast but rather for our annual Christmas Roast. Savannah, our daughter, is home for the holidays, and is baking every conceivable concoction of desert including a Yule log, a Bourbon pumpkin cheesecake, a red velvet bunt cake, a chocolate buttermilk cake, and various pies. Since she has been surviving on college food for the last months her mind has obviously wondered off into the land of fanciful deserts, which she is fulfilling in the days before Christmas. She has taken over the kitchen in preparation for her all-nighters of baking. There is flour sifting everywhere, moulds, cake pans, bunt pans, and pie pans being greased and caressed. Even our bird Melody is humming Christmas carols along with Savannah as she dons her apron singing I'm dreaming of a white Christmas while it is 70 degrees outside and focuses on her tasks ahead. There is the aroma of Bourbon and pumpkin wafting through the house and as I make my way into the kitchen there are endless mounds of butter, flour, sugar, and chocolate. Enough good food to give any good set of eyes and nose good cheer. Outside the final leaves are being raked, the lawn pristine with dew, the gravel driveway is being raked and manicured for our guests. Inside the tree is glowing with decorations, and mysteriously mounds of presents seem to find there way under the tree. The couches are being vacuumed, windows are being cleaned, beds are being made and slowly the house begins to shine its Christmas best. And now we prepare the table for the feast. The handmade linen tablecloth is carefully ironed and with all hands on deck, is carefully placed perfectly over the large dining table. Next my mother's Royal Copenhagen china from the early 1950s is carefully placed around the table along with the silver tableware. The wine and water glasses are placed by each serving. The silver candlesticks are carefully placed in the center of the table, and beautiful flowers are placed throughout the house. Often there is the smell of peony, lilac, vibrant tulips, lush hydrangeas, and exotic roses perfuming the Christmas Feast. Special wine has been selected and the house begins to shine with all its glory as it prepares to welcome those who come for this special feast. As Christmas day approaches I…

  We arrived at the terminal at 9:30PM on our day of departure for a late night eighteen hour nonstop flight to Singapore. We were off to participate in an opening of my work at the FOST Gallery in Singapore. Leslie, my wife was convinced that leaving late at night was a good thing. We would arrive at the airport already tired, and we would simply get on the plane and sleep our way luxuriously to Singapore. I, on the other hand, was not so sure. I am a morning day person, grumpy and irritable at night, and was not sure how well I would do with the window blinds closed for the whole flight. We were traversing the world flying east in eighteen hours of continual night. At 11PM sharp we departed on a large Singapore airlines plane, converted to only one luxurious class, and off we went on an adventure, my feet will never forget. As we began our long travel we relaxed into a four hour dinner, and despite consuming alcohol, drugs, and wishful thinking I found myself unable to sleep but rather staring at the flight-map for eighteen hours as we slowly made our way across Europe, all across Russia, down the edge of Iran, through the entire length of India, down further past Thailand, and lastly finally touching down at the immaculately, clean, precise, and ultramodern airport of Singapore. The third world may be all around you but you are in an oasis of first world modernity. For eighteen hours I had not blinked once watching the TV map progress ever so slowly in front of me. I was totally transfixed. I knew as well as the pilot our longitude and latitude at every given minute. I was a sitting GPS. Unlike all the intelligent people on the plane, who had slept luxuriously flat on a bed made by stewardesses, I had remained upright, for some unknown reason, for the entire flight. Everyone arrived ready to go. I arrived ready to sleep. No wonder I arrived in Singapore with spots in my eyes. These little black spots floating across my vision, I am convinced started by staring at the map for eighteen hours. We were met at the hotel by our most gracious hostesses, who for the duration of our stay made every effort to be our companions and take care of our every wish. Here I was surrounded by two young beautiful gracious Asian women, who took care of me. What could be better for an old man like me. It was pure bliss. Every day the question would be. Do I need a foot massage, a back massage, a leg massage, a nap, a meal, or anything else that they could do to make our stay pleasant and memorable. The art of hosting and graciousness is definitely not lost in the East. Woe to America. Every day as the clock struck 2PM it was time for our daily reflexology. We would be ushered…

  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…

  All my life, I've wondered and often inquired how people pass their days. What rituals do they follow when they are the most creative? What do they eat for breakfast? When do they dine for dinner? Are they a morning person or an evening person? Do they wear a uniform of sorts or does their wardrobe vary? What little distinctions do people make as they go through the routine of their days to help define their particular nature and distinguish themselves from others? We all basically look the same and have somewhat the same routines yet each of us is an individual and I'm curious how we define ourselves as special. In this light I thought it only befitting that I reveal the peculiarities that surround my daily rituals. 5:00AM to 6:00AM depending on the season. Rise and then shine briefly. This is both a time of great happiness, the best I usually feel all day, and often anxiety. I've never quite figured out why I feel both happy and anxious. I often need not a cup of coffee but rather a valium to get my day rolling. 7:00AM to 8:00AM Breakfast which has become somewhat of a ritual. Usually scrambled egg whites with toast, followed by one hour of bliss either reading the New York Times or in the Spring and Summer walking in the garden, pruning, listening and speaking quietly to the landscape and the gardens around me. By this time I am usually so mellow I now need a cup of coffee. There is nothing like a valium followed by a cup of coffee to finally realize the perfect stasis in my morning. 8:00AM to 9:00AM What would be more proper as I have now reached the perfect equilibrium with a slight tilt towards repose to take a nap. This has become a habit that started in my twenties and has lasted well into my sixties. This time although it appears I have dropped out of the world is one of my favorite times of the day. I love waking up and then going back to sleep. I usually sit in my favorite chair in our garden room with the sun shining through the windows and I quickly and peacefully nod off for an hour. 9:00AM to 12:00PM Everyone arrives at 9AM so I have to pretend like I'm busy. Everyone is humming along, scanning, invoicing, estimating, processing film, etc. and I the lord of the manor oversea the enterprise. All my life I have basically worn a uniform, although today I broke from my usual habit of wearing khaki pants, a dress shirt with my initials embroidered at the third button, and a pair of tassel loafers. This was my uniform in boarding school, in college, and in life. Why change a good thing. I know what I'm going to wear and I don't have to worry. I'm comfortable in my uniform. This is also my most productive time. If I am shooting, writing blogs,…