Childhood

Our son, Brady, was born in 1986. My daughter, Laura, in 1991.  Becoming a father changed me a lot. For one, I looked at things and people more emotionally and open than before. I did however remain full of artistic ambition. My street pictures from the past were generally about finding some poetic order in street scenes Even though I liked those images they did strike me as emotionally distant.  I was heavily influenced by the work of Cartier- Bresson, Diane Arbus and Robert Frank. In the contained world of our apartment I made pictures that required more attention, sensitivity, focus and time than any work prior in my life. In a way I began to add heart to my eyes but I also  knew that I did not want to make nostalgic pictures, I wanted to picture something about an artist looking at childhood that had the fresh face of a new situation.  The pictures that came out of this period were mostly quiet looking and of subjects at rest with interesting light, closeness, and point of view. Often my exposures were minutes long. In taking my time so to speak I had the luxury of considering and meditating on a bunch of ideas and thoughts while working. It’s not quite Zen, but when I stared at a milk bottle during a five-minute exposure while Brady was taking a nap, my mind underwent interesting changes.  This period was such a gift to my art, it provided room to grow. Much of my later pictures have some of the DNA from this time. As I have said, becoming a father had a radical shift in in the balance of my emotional and artistic life. I would say that those two poles got closer. The strategy of photographing things as if seen by Brady liberated me from depending on the usual “grown up” angles of seeing. I put my camera on the floor often because that’s where I played with Brady. What touched my imagination radically was discovering how “normal” objects seen from the new perspectives of the ground changed my perception and vision of them from the floor for instance a sofa is not what one thinks of a sofa exactly-it’s stranger and monster-like! Imagine what a baby sees! A door becomes alive in countless ways. This approach is like a nonacademic method to ask the linguistic question, what is in a name. Typically, adults don’t spend time sitting on the ground, it’s not that useful or practical but artistically it’s really beneficial and wonderful, I recommend it!