The birth of my interest in allegorical photographs began with my first camera, a gift from my mother in 1972. I created a tableau for my first picture: my sister stood under my grandmother’s grape arbor and acted like the Venus di Milo, which I’d seen on Bugs Bunny. My instinct at age 12 was to use the camera to make art rather than to record what was around me. The mystery of being able to recreate the world to suit my imagination and to express that vision through this small, mechanical devise was the deeply held secret of my childhood. It is a notion that persists throughout my life’s work.
As an undergraduate at the School of Visual Arts in NYC where I majored in art history and photography, I was asked to work on a book of flowers which I altered to resemble medieval illuminations. I had gone to school with every intention of being the next Alfred Stieglitz, but after the book was published I was surprised by a commercial career in photography that lasted a decade. I recommitted myself to fine art photography after my transformative experience of nearly total blindness due to HIV-related CMV retinitis.
My first instinct after my sight change was to share what I saw through my damaged eyes--spotted photographs and blurred figures--which was not satisfying for me. next>
