The Obits: One of the great archives of world history..

The one obituary in the New York Times. The day, the hour, the second I saw the obituary for the famed Surrealist Joan Miro, I realized the history of mankind lives in the pages of the obits.

There is something magical about obituaries. Whether all the information printed is true or not, you begin to realize that not just that lives are celebrated, but the amazing universe that people come from. It is like following a human groundwater to see where everyone comes together. There is geography, family, education, poverty, wealth, just plain old DNA.

I was already engaged in a quasi agenda to photograph a history of artists. But now I was compelled to find my own Quattrocento. I needed to make my own Vasari’s “Lives of the Artists”. So knowing I couldn’t have my Quattrocento, or my Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore, Ben Nicholson Cornwall commune or any other lives before my time. I tried to record groupings of portraits by their lineage, titles, styles, happenings.

Was I always successful? Not always. But the agendas gave me a shooting star to follow. I could literally record that arc of the lives of artists by where their place of embankment into the fine art worlds found their accelerator. For example, I didn’t get all of the Coenties Slip artists. But I found Jack Youngerman, Ellsworh Kelly and more.

I didn’t get all of the people that hung out at the Cedar Tavern, But Willem de Kooning, Robert Motherwell, Howard Kanovitz, Philip Pavia….And so it began.

I remember when I surrendered my eyes to portraiture for ten years…

Heroes are spirited untouchable friends. When they have touched our hearts we are forever forever bound to lives lived. But is it a dream?

My portraits need a moment, a breath of life. I need some whisper of history when I enter my portrait sessions. I need more than watching the artist Larry Rivers devour his white bread American cheese and mayo sandwich while engrossed in the Brady Bunch. Was there more to the sculptor Reuben Nakian nipping on his Meatloaf on white bread with catsup and a glass of milk. I don’t need the dark secrets. But I do wish to know. It helps position the dots of the human experience. It indicates that you are talking to more than just the subject at hand. You are speaking to the artists’ universe.

The artists were in a sense heroes because of their labor of love for arts sake

and for our love for what they produced. The artists I met and photographed were famous, infamous and mostly unknown beyond the borders of their canvas.

The Sprint

I didn’t know it, but there has been an army of photographers making portraits of artists from the outset of photography’s history. My guess is that if you needed to engage in the spirit of creativity and the science of an art, whom better than to focus on than artists.

Yes artistry falls into dozens of categories. That preset, set me afire and I found myself sprinting across cities with Nikon in hand to inhabit the moment that the artists offered me. I discovered that hundreds of artists were lying in wait for me. I for them, they for me.

Do you know the good years when you are in them?

I have absolutely zero reason to look back with regret. In fact I scaled mountains to come to terms with the respect for a time past. It was a crazy ride. The personal reveal is an exasperated scream with absolutely no sound. I lived every day for tomorrow. I never knew who I was truly meeting. It was always a race to get to the next day, for the next moment. The love for that moment when I exited the studio of XY and Z changed my life every single time. My life was altered by what I saw, who I photographed and the nature of change from experience. To say they were amazing years is to shortchange the experience. The experience was my raison d’etre.

Posthumous

Certainly, looking back over the thousands of faces who sat before me, I realized over time as I matured in life, that it wasn’t always revelatory. Sometimes it was disappointing, sometimes ho-hum. But when the moment resonated I realized I achieved greatness. It wasn’t greatness because of the photograph. It was greatness because the main reason I needed to become a photographer was realized in a shutter speed setting.

My snippets with Jean Dubuffet, Marc Chagall and Francis Bacon and other whales that got away were magnificent moments. But when they died, I read the obits. My life looking for my own Quattrocento seemed to be realized. I sadly realize that I have missed more than I should have. I missed making an asterisk in photography’s history.

I have to hurry now. I need to surrender my eyes. I need to sprint. I need to dance. The good years are all of my years with camera in hand. There is a bit more of dna to discover.