I refer to my creative work as “WITNESS” photography because I’m trying to see and help others see deeper into life’s mystery. I’m indebted to the poet Rilke when it comes to the art of seeing, and understand my work as a visual extension of his Duino Elegies. My signature image of the angel (pictured at left) was one of my first really iconic images, resonating with the opening lines of Rilke’s g
reat masterpiece, “The Duino Elegies.” Rilke says about the angels, “even if one of them pressed me suddenly against his heart: I would be consumed in that overwhelming existence. For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, which we still are just able to endure, and we are so awed because it serenely disdains to annihilate us. Every angel is terrifying.”
More recently I’ve begun to collaborate with a crazy old Beat poet by the name of Albee, who publishes under the name, A. I took an author photo of Albee back when I first met him a few years ago and in his contagiously enthusiastic rapid-fire speech he blurted out that I had captured his soul, prompting him to dub me a Beat photographer and to write me a poem which I framed and displayed at my first show (at the Old Stone House in Brooklyn). Because of my longstanding interest in the Beats and because I was so taken with Albee, I started embedding words and phrases from his poems in my images. We showed a few of these collaborative worksat a BWAC show and we’re working on an upcoming show (date tba) at Clatyon Patterson’s, “Outlaw Gallery,” on the Lower East Side.
