Here We R: A CyberJournal

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As a photographer I am not interested in pointing my camera at the pathos of other people's lives. I don't try to reveal or to probe. I certainly don't try to capture souls. (If any soul is revealed, it's mine.) I am moved by the affection and the caring that people have for each other. On rare occasions I am upset by the anger and selfishness I am privy to during sessions. More often I am overwhelmed at how hard people are on themselves. They can't forgive themselves for losing their hair or gaining weight or having eyes that are too small, too big, too widely spaced, too narrowly spaced. They won't smile because there is a gap between their teeth. They are upset because their hair won't lie flat (an obsession I attribute to the hair style of TV anchor people). In those circumstances I try to comfort my sitter into a moment of acceptance and pray that my portrait will show them that they are more than their offending teeth, hair. etc. Within families there is a web of relationships--but I don't want to convey uneasiness or distress in the portraits. Instead, I want to create with my subject the evidence that they are surviving and prevailing. I see my family portraits -- and especially the megafamily portraits of several siblings and spouses and children-- as proof of affectionate endurance.

The portraits that I take on commission and the portraits I take for myself have come to look the same and feel the same to me. My portraits of Allen Ginsberg have been continuing since that first session in 1980. My first self-portrait was during that session, too. I make self portraits on my birthday and every now and then when I have only one shot left in the case of film. (I think it is good for me to experience what my subjects are going through--and it is wild to see how I have changed over ten years.) My first portrait of Harvey and Isaac was in 1981--and I take at least one every year. Since 1981 when Isaac was in kindergarten I have taken portraits of the children in his class at the Martin Luther King Open School in Cambridge. Young people who come to my studio ask me if I get bored taking portraits. The question stops me in my tracks. The answer, after thought, is that I don't get bored. I think it is because the people are all different. And the people are wonderful and eager and glad to be there. I do get scared though, that I won't get a good portrait, that I won't be as good as I have been. I do worry more than about how the portrait will be than I did when I started out.

For me the key word is "apparently." All I hope my photographs say is this person lives and this person was here.

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