The spring open house at the huge Mana Contemporary in Jersey City NJ was fascinating as always. I have gone to Mana open houses before and I always enjoy it. But it is overwhelming. Six floors plus a basement of artists studios and gallery spaces. There are art storage spaces for organizations such as ICP …
Charles Schwartz On January 24, 2019 my dear friend Charles Schwartz died. He had been sick and incapacitated for years, so his death was bittersweet. He was released from a personal hell being imprisoned in his crumpled body. May 21st, 2019 a memorial was held at the Explorers Club in midtown Manhattan where Charles had …
Sometimes people ask me where I get my ideas and how do I create so much stuff… and I really can’t answer – I just do it. When I visited Ricky Boscarino’s Luna Parc in northwest New Jersey I had to ask him the same questions. Enigmatically he answered “time management” as though there is …
Being the naive person that I am, I am always amazed when I encounter someone who is dishonest. I know, in today’s political world it seems like there is an epidemic of dishonesty and hypocrisy, but in the art world I innocently expect the best from everyone I deal with. And most of the time …
I was asked to do a couple of hand portraits to raise money for a worthy cause: Write on Sports – an organization that teaches inner city kids to write by writing news articles about sports. Back in 2005 I photographed about 100 people for my MANUAL Project. But I hadn’t done any “hand portraits” …
A time lapse video of making a hand sculpture using the Makerbot Replicator 2. The process was involved: At the Digital Atelier in Hamilton NJ we created a plaster cast of my hand and then made a high resolution scan of the plaster cast. The file had to be edited to cut the hand at …
When I read the shocking news this week that drone maker DJI was buying Hasselblad the venerable camera maker it brought back memories. Not just my unpleasant memories of owning a Hasselblad 500ELM and a few lenses. I loved the image quality but I detested how complex it was to use the camera and how …
How in the hell did I do that? Sometimes when I look back at an older photogram or print that I made I wonder how I got an effect or what kind of process I was using. Fortunately I have my own personal time machine. It works some of the time. It is pretty simple. …
As far back as I can remember my family created and sent our own original Christmas Cards. Yes, my heritage is Jewish, but we never practiced, and like many German Jews in Cincinnati we celebrated Christmas. I have continued the tradition of making my own Christmas cards since I moved out of my parents’ house …
A recipe for a Silver Sunbeam – A glimpse at how I made a 21st century edition of the classic 19th century book of photographic techniques. John Towler’s 1864 “Silver Sunbeam” was a revolutionary book that shared recipes for making those very new and magical things called photographs. The PDF of the 1864 edition The …