THEN

The photographs that follow fall into two groups. Some are images that have never left my thoughts; my dying aunt in Calabria (1983), watched over by the ceiling painting of the Goddess Diana commissioned by her husband in 1922; the Towering Twins (1982), photographed for a commissioned essay on Banking and Architecture in Pittsburgh; the cigarette girl at the Rainbow Room and the night clerk at the Hotel Maison de Ville in New Orleans, both from my earliest travel editorial assignments. Each one is waiting to be revisited.

The rest offer a glimpse into a 36-year career.

Towering Twins, Carnegie, Banking and Architecture 1982

Braddock, Banking and Architecture, 1982

Traveling with a Mannequin, Nags Head, North Carolina, 1975, 500CM 80mm

Alhambra for Travel & Leisure, infrared film, 1992

Relatives, My uncle in cousin fishing in Calabria, 1984

Book Cover, Giuseppe Terragni, second edition 2024

NOW

Dolce far niente — the sweetness of doing nothing.

It is the perfect description of life at 78 with a camera. No assignments, no deadlines, no client waiting. Only the curious eye of a photographer who has spent fifty years looking at the world and has not yet finished.

The photographs in this section are a visual stream of consciousness — made at home, on the street, in the neighborhood. Lynn, my wife of 53 years, photographed then and now. A broken dishwasher set out for collection, arranged with the formality of a still life. A vacuum cleaner waiting for repair. A political sign. A moment of light. A life observed without agenda.

This is not retirement from photography. It is photography liberated from everything but itself.