University of Virginia, me and my father Whenever I vist Williamsburg, Virginia–where I grew up–I always think about the presence of architecture exhibited in the mostly modest structures that were built there in the 18th century. The way in which ideas of a new civilization were carved into the wilderness. The most important of Virginia’s […]

Captain John Smith statue, Jamestown, Virginia The last few days I was in Williamsburg, Virginia to visit my 85 year old father who remains active despite the usual infirmities that come with a long life. We spent one day touring Colonial Williamsburg, and another at Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in North America. This […]

Ground Zero/WTC Ground Zero/WTC I took an exploratory walk with my view camera around the World Trade Center site today. It was in the mid-20s and icy underfoot, but the air was clear and sharp. I hadn’t been down there with my camera since just after 9/11, on Broadway, the first day they let people […]

Tippelzone (prostitution zone), Amsterdam (4×5 film) A few months ago I was invited by Joakim Sebring of the F Blog, a weblog on photography maintained by a group of photographers based in Sweden, to submit a series of my pictures of Amsterdam. It took me a while to get the portfolio together, but I have […]

Toys in BrooklynWe spent the weekend visiting friends in Brooklyn, shopping at the Strand bookstore, playing and helping with Junior Knicks basketball at the Y. But through it all I could never push out of my mind the war in Iraq, the President’s “surge,” and the sabre rattling aimed at Iran. The Times ran an […]

Orchard Street, New York City, February 11, 2006 (4×5 film) It’s been cold in New York City of late, but no snow. Upstate there’s 10 feet or more of the white stuff. Here it’s been dry as a bone. The Hudson is partly frozen over, but no snow. People talk about the snows of long […]

Brendan, my son, and the Unisphere My first trip to New York was in 1964, when I was 10 years old, to see the World’s Fair. I traveled from Virginia with my father in a tiny English Ford, and we camped in a state park on Long Island to save money, over an hour away […]

From Henri Cartier-Bresson’s Scrap Book, Thames & Hudson An interesting print in the Cartier-Bresson exhibit at ICP shows an uncropped version of the famous photo (behind St. Lazare station) in which a man leaps across a pool of water, his foot a millimeter from touching the surface with his image mirrored in it. The ICP […]

The Empire State Building from 6th Avenue and 42nd Street (near ICP) Given the current preference for very large exhibition prints, the Henri Cartier-Bresson exhibit at ICP is exceptional in that most of the prints are no more than 9×12 centimeters–smaller than 4×5 inches. The prints were originally made for a scrapbook that Cartier-Bresson created […]