FINE
ART PORTRAIT PHOTOGRAPHY IN RICHMOND, SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA, CALIFORNIA:
Born a natural seeker and idealist in
post-war suburbia, I evolved into a teenage counterculture rebel, protesting
the outer world while exploring the inner. Inspired by folks like Thoreau,
Allen Ginsberg, R.D. Laing, and Alan Watts, I set my hopes on Enlightenment
and Liberation.
After my freshman year in college—devoted largely to exploring
consciousness and protesting the Vietnam War—I took a permanent
leave of absence to become a world-transcending Hindu monk. Over a seventeen-year
period (1970-1987), I plumbed the depths of that tradition as a committed
ascetic, teacher, and author of introductions to my guru's translations
and commentaries on ancient Sanskrit texts—with annual pilgrimages
to India. Eventually becoming my organization's de facto ambassador
to academia, I entered the Academy through the back door, attending
conferences and writing articles (principally on forms of Eastern spirituality
in the West), published in various academic books and volumes. A series
of my interviews with scholars—assessing one such group—was
published by Grove Press in 1983 and well received by reviewers.
I bailed from the ashram in 1987, deeply disillusioned. Falling into
the material world and landing at Harvard Divinity School, I studied
Comparative Religion, reflecting on the great spiritual ideas and their
embodiments in historical/cultural forms (Master of Theological Studies,
1990). After graduation, I wrote a book about my earlier experiences
in India—part travel memoir, part spiritual confession—with
generous mentoring from Elie Wiesel—writer, humanitarian, Nobel
Laureate.
In late 1994 I discovered photography as an expressive medium. It seemed
to come out of nowhere, as an answer to a prayer for a passion and a
path. I set up a darkroom at home and fell in love with the alchemy
of creation, fascinated by the synergy of seeing and imagination. I
began exploring the history of the medium, discovering kindred souls:
seekers of meaning, excavators of the beautiful and the marvelous—people
like Edward Weston, Josef Sudek, André Kertész, Bill Brandt,
Minor White, Wynn Bullock, Paul Caponigro, Ruth Bernhard, and so many
others.
Aside from actively photographing, I am currently working on a book
that will explore the “spiritual,”as it were, in photography.
Part of the research entails a close look at writings by and about photographic
artists for whom the medium has been, variously, a path of self-discovery,
an investigation into matters of appearance and reality, and of essence
and meaning, experiments and investigations into the nature of light
(literally and as metaphor), and a Zen-like discipline of radical receptivity—to
name a few of the approaches explored. I hope to weave together voices
from the history of the medium with my own insights.
Though intellectually immersed in the history and aesthetics of the
medium, I try to keep my eye “innocent” within my own work,
to see the world afresh at each moment. After ten years in photography
(since 1994), pleasing myself and filling boxes with prints, I feel
it's about time to share what I've seen, and how I see, and what to
me is beautiful, mysterious, and compelling, with a wider public. So,
welcome to my online gallery, take a look around, and feel free to contact
me to purchase a print, discuss a commission, or simply to share your
thoughts.
