1995
and my wife presented me with an
ultimatum: go with her back to Japan or not but, with me or without
me, she was going to boogie. Her father, widowed and aging, was sinking
fast and needed her care. She had been in America for fifteen years
and was worn out by it; the crime, the relentless egoism, the lack of
civility, the random racism, the chaos seemingly so close to the surface,
the obscene wealth contrasted against the desperate poverty, and speaking
English. She had been a rock but she was beat. We took the kids and
flew west to the East.
For me, this meant leaving a chairman's
position, a secure teaching job and access to the darkrooms and chemicals
that make photography, which had been my passion and claim to fame,
possible. I was 'middle-aged' but knew we had to make this leap or there
would be no more 'we'. I was also fascinated by the possibilities of
the Internet as a place to do work and show that work almost simultaneously.
I had started writing poetry and doing digital self-portraits and saw
this break as a chance to push this work forward.
The buzz words are 'reinventing
yourself'. They slide so trippingly off the tongue but are so difficult
to navigate while in the midst. However, in the process of sinking like
a stone, I learned something. This website (and mirror version CD) is dedicated to exploring that
thing: being an artist is the easy part, embodying art is another thing
entirely.
This work is ongoing and we are still in Japan. The Internet has become more and less
than what I thought it would be, mostly less. I now see again the good of prints and books and have been working with an Epson 7600, a marvelous 7 color
inkjet printer.
As always, this website is note in a bottle throw
into the sea from this island where we live. There are seven different
galleries here: 35mm work,
a series of portraits of Blues musicians,
two and a quarter images from my first
trip to Japan, poetry
about my experiences in Vietnam, more
work from Japan (6x7), three
sets of color images and digital images with
poetry. There is also a new and changing gallery of images I am now working on. Go to the New Japanese Work gallery
I am casting this work out so that
I might connect with the the world at large. I want to have it shown
and bought and seen by as large a number of people as I can get to look
at it. If you have anything to say about what you find here, please contact me.
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