My exposure to photography goes back as far as I can remember (around 3-4 years old) and the fascination has always been there. My dad had been an aerial reconnaissance photographer and engineer before and during WWII and continued his interest afterwards. I certainly remember Life Magazine and still have the copy of “U.S. Camera – 1936” that was in the house. My interest in electronics and engineering began later – when I was 8 (a card carrying geek – what can I say). The actual making of photographs myself does not begin until College (Rensselaer in electrical engineering) from 1966 to 1970. This was an unbelievably weird and disturbing 4 years. Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy are assassinated, it’s the worst 4 years of the Viet Nam war, we land on the Moon, riots, marches, students shot at Kent State, drugs, music, computers, the Interstate Highway system comes together, Woodstock, gas is cheap. I was not alone in seeing that the Universe was coming unglued. Dreams of a future for myself were coming unglued right along with the Universe. My dreams of engineering had been starting to become real as a coop with the Hewlett-Packard Medical Division in Waltham Mass. At the end of one of the summers, I drove to California and back. The land was a visual awakening. SLR cameras were fairly new, becoming very popular and I was drawn in along with half the rest of creation. My first SLR was bought in 1969 and I began with black and white film, learning to develop and print anyway possible. I even built an enlarger out of odds and ends my father had left in the basement (he passed away in 1967). A darkroom in the new Student Union at RPI served me when I was there. Anywhere with a sink and a closet could be used to develop film.

These images are from a single roll of film taken over only two days. It is the 19^th roll out of my first camera. They are a singularity in my early photographs. The majority of work in my first years with a camera is focused on beauty in the natural world and technical experiments. This roll was about the realities of my own life and feelings. I believe that this was a turning point for me, not so much in terms of subject matter or style, but in terms of taking photography seriously as something beyond making pretty pictures.