The Dentist …
As a child, I had this insatiable need to study every living thing I could get my hands on where I lived, near the shore in Connecticut. I had aquariums with reptiles, insects, amphibians- there was a miniature zoo in my porch at home! During this time, I discovered my father’s medical journals. I was amazed. I couldn’t pour over them enough. How things worked in nature was all I thought about. There was something there I needed to know about and know it well.
My father was extremely talented in his dental practice, with most of his patients coming from the Yale community. I would hear stories of certain cases with awe. All of this was percolating into my love of the natural world. His dedication to study, the never-ending need to keep on top of current medical trends, had their effect on me and complemented my own zoological endeavors.
About three years after my best friend introduced me to photography and I was bitten by it, a college teacher of mine was looking at my work and said, “I can tell by your disposition and your work you need to go to large format, to a 4x5 camera. Just do it”. I was completely shocked. Who did I think I was using such a fancy camera? He saw something that I didn't. He pressed the issue, I dove in, and it was a perfect match. This new camera felt oddly already known to me, but at the time I couldn’t explain it.
Now the introspection I had used during all of those early childhood years glued to a microscope had returned, replaced by another optical instrument that now offered a new, yet somehow familiar experience. Now it was the introspective quality of the ground glass in a view camera. Even the dark cloth enveloping my head which allowed me a front-row seat to marvel at what was before me, was the same as the black abyss surrounding the circular view of a microscope.
I had come full circle, and it made perfect sense. The experience of life was not confined to a drop of pond water, a terrarium tank or a particular spot at a tidal pool, but the world as far as I could go.