Along The Way

      I came to photography from painting, on a road that began with drawing and printmaking. Many years ago I took my first drawing class with Michael Mazur at Brandeis University. I studied printmaking there, and in Paris, at Atelier 17. I came home to become a painter, which occupied me for almost 20 years. I still think of myself as a painter, only with a camera instead of a brush.
      The images I present here reference my early work, bring to life the charcoal drawings I did as a young artist. There is the speed in them of rushing by one’s subject, the smudge and reconsideration of the charcoal stick and knead-able eraser. They were taken out the window of a moving car while also moving the camera in just such a way, developed over years of taking these kinds of images, that they contain both points of clear focus one would have as one drives, or rides, as well as the acceleration and blur of a traveler. There is, in almost all, the deep rich black of a mezzotint, the silvery grey of an erased area and the bright whites in points or trails of the exposed paper beneath the layers of marks, blankets of grey/black. And in each one a tree, or trees, stand against the light, with mighty trunks or delicate branches, their leaves seemingly dancing with the great wind of the viewer passing.