About half way through my life (how does one calculate this fraction?), I determined that I wanted to have THREE 25-year professional careers in life. I had achieved the first and was well into my second, and you are seeing the third! Practically no photographic artist in the world actually earns a living wage with his/her art, so we’ll see if it is actually a “career” by that definition.
In 1970 I had just started graduate school in Chemistry, and had fallen in love with photography and graphic arts – and I had to make a decision to stay in school or explore art. I spent a year studying with the great New Yorker cartoonist, Edward Koren, and was swaying for some time. Better wisdom prevailed and I stayed in chemistry, while considering photography as an Avocation for many years. I always loved chemistry, in fact I have loved every day of every career I have had – does that make me the luckiest man on earth? Or does it paint me as particularly determined not to waste a moment of this precious life? I have been in love with another human being (OK – NOT always the same one) for the vast majority of my life on earth too – does this make me the luckiest man on earth, or just not very selective?! OR … observant?
I DID put together a one-man show in New York City in 1975, and also attended the landmark photographic workshop of all time, at the opening of the Center for Creative Photography, in Tucson, Arizona. Our teachers were Ansel Adams, Minor White, Frederick Sommer, Robert Heinikin, Judy Dater, Richard Misrach and others! Ansel Adams spent an entire afternoon in the darkroom showing how to print one of MY negatives – Mission and Wired Window, Tucson, 1975. This workshop is when I discovered the wonderful truth – NO, NOT the horrible or awful truth! I was at the same stage in my scientific career as many of the younger photographers – Misrach, Dater, Heinikin …. THEY were looking for inspiration for their next artistic exploration, EXACTLY as I was looking for inspiration for my next scientific exploration! We were going through precisely the SAME thing. When it comes to INSPIRATION and CREATIVITY, no field is any different from any other field. I learned my creativity in Chemistry and Photography at the same time.