Characters

I love taking portraits of people. I've been working with people for years, documenting them, and taking their pictures. This section details some of those experiences. So much can be said in the human face. But the pictures are not always of the face. You can render someone's portrait by simply taking a picture of their hands. It's a beautiful process, and it's all about the relationship you form with your subject. For more detailed photo essays, please refer to my website.

The Cellist

My good friend Johnny had an amazing place in Brooklyn Heights once. Just amazing, and all that you could want in a Brooklyn digs. Tall ceilings, and huge windows that let all the afternoon light in, and a magnolia tree that exploded with huge delicious platter sized flowers in early spring. Aside from all that, a cellist who lived up stairs practiced most afternoons. I can’t count the wonderful hours I spent napping or reading in the sunlight listening to the cello being played. The acoustics of the old building gave the music a strange effect in that it seemed to come not just from the ceiling in one spot, but from all around, from below and from up top. The music filled the apartment in the most pleasant way. For years, I had no idea who of my friend’s neighbors it was who practiced so much. Of all his neighbors, non fit the profile of who I imaged the player to be. There was the guy with the cleft pallet, who always talked about the weather. There was the war vet, who walked around aimlessly at night, and a little old lady who took nearly an hour to get up the stairs. Who was it? I was looking for someone, who wore a beret, had Corbusier like round glasses, dressed in black, and donned a tan trench coat most days. 

I was surprised to find out that the little old lady who took an hour to get up the stairs was the cellist who practiced so often. I eventually moved in with my friend, and I made it a point to meet the cellist and tell her how much I liked her playing. We became good neighbors, and I’d often take her groceries up for her, and shoot the breeze whenever I had time. I never thought of her as someone who I would photograph, but it hit me that she would be a great subject for a photo-essay. She has a simple story of determination and passion, which came to mean a lot to me over the years.

The wonderful thing about her is that she is far past her prime, in terms of her ability to play. She admits this freely. Her hands are arthritic, and all manner of ailments associated with old age prevent her from playing a technically perfect piece. The wonderful thing is that she persists and practices out of shear love for her art. In its own way, this makes her music more beautiful to listen to than the perfection of a virtuoso.

A word on photographing Judy: She was extremely self-conscious about her looks. It was important to be patient, supportive, and sensitive. I realized that I might not be able to photograph her at all, and I was prepared to walk away with no shots. It’s so easy to be greedy with photography, to just snap away and then walk away. But as William Albert Allard said once, “good photographs are given, and never taken.”

Working with Judy taught me that the relationship you have with a subject must come first, and that it must be real. In a fashion and industrial setting, this is unrealistic, but as a documentarian, and a true image maker, I feel the relationship you have with a subject, whether it be a person or a place, is as important as skill and talent.