I
started my career as a commercial photographer in London during
the late '60s. I was fortunate enough to attract such clients
as Chanel Perfume, Clairol, Coty and Goya Perfume to my studios
in London and Amsterdam and in 1980, with Texas Instruments and
Shell Oil being two of my major American accounts, I opened a
studio in Houston, Texas. In 1985, with an offer from one of
Hollywood's leading commercial production companies, Vern Gillum
& Friends, I made my way to California to direct television
commercials.
In the past 8 years I have been working primarily as a documentary
and reportage photographer. I see myself as a story teller using
single silent frames as my language. Sometimes these frames are
joined together to tell an overall story, like the images from
my essay 'Portrait Of A City Hospital', the story of public health
care in America. The completed essay comprises sixty photographs
and is now part of the permanent collection of the City of Denver
and their Art in Public Places Program.
There is a great quote from Rémy de Gourmont (1858
- 1915) that, 'Life is a series of sensations connected to states
of consciousness'. That is what fascinates me, those sensations
and how we react to them. Not just pictures that shock or are
sensational, but rather Us in everyday situations and how unique
we are, even in the mundane.
One of the essays I am most proud of is entitled 'From Generation
to Generation'. It documents orthodox Jewish communities in America,
inspired by the photographs in 'Vanished World' by the late Dr.
Roman Vishniac. This project has already received considerable
recognition and was partly funded through a Fellowship from the
Colorado Council on the Arts and a grant from Stephen Spielberg's
Righteous Persons Foundation.
I am currently working on an ongoing project entitled 'Yards'
Americans fascination with their front porch. An image
from this series has already been recognised by the Kobal Awards
and exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery in London.
Like many reportage photographers, my work and philosophy
have been heavily influenced by Henri Cartier-Bresson who talks
about his pictures as, '...the simultaneous recognition, in a
fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well
as of a precise organization of forms that give that event its
proper expression'.