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.
Dying Woman in Calabria, 1983
Towering Twins, Carnegie, Banking and Architecture 1982
Rainbow Room, 1986
Night Clerk, New Orleans 1987
Forth of July, 1984
Lynn, age 25, 1976
Clairton Works, 1976
Lynn pregnant , 1976
Braddock, Banking and Architecture, 1982
Traveling with a Mannequin, Nags Head, North Carolina, 1975, 500CM 80mm
Latina, 1984
Tenny Town Motel 1982
New Orleans 1987
Camping, 1983
Neighbors, 1980
Absolut Bologna
Cook Islands
Arles, France for Travel & Leisure
Alhambra for Travel & Leisure, infrared film, 1992
Alhambra for Travel & Leisure, infrared film, 1992
Swiss Tourist, 1985
Terragna book cover, 1987
Terragni, Novocomo 1997
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.
