Occasionally I photograph the path and where it leads, the richness of rain subduing the extroversions of a sunny day. I’m looking for him on these walks, the person I know only through photographs. Is the camera a temporal divining rod?

When my brain is being its defective self, my understanding of the world shows through…

This is my constant companion, Lenny, also known as The Dude, I think he has a little bit of Jeff bridges happening in the middle image! He is, like most cats, a total goof….but handsome? Wow. He’s well travelled having been all the way to Mazatlan in Mexico and back, a long trip and a great story….later. The two images of his smily face were made before he had an unfortunate playground accident; he went head-to-tire with a car on the highway….not sure what became of the car, but The Dude is still loving life in spite of the loss of most of his teeth.

A few years ago, well maybe 7 yrs, I built this 20″x 20″ view camera with the intention of making 16″x 20″ tintype portraits. Life intervened and here we are all these years later, resurrecting the monster as I dive head first into tintypes again. I’m working out a few necessary modifications to its design, simplifying the movements and redesigning the plate holder, hopefully I’ll be able to take it on the road with me…I’m not getting younger as far as I can tell!

: a spike, wedge, or peg that is driven into a rock or ice surface as a support (as for a mountain climber). 

Pitonographs? Can I coin a new word to describe some core images: this photograph was made in Toronto in 1987, in Wilket Creek Park at Leslie and Eglinton. Chaos softened by rain.

Pitonographs are photographs, not necessarily good photographs, but important for the anchoring that occurred when made. I’ve returned to this image over and over because of an epiphany of sorts, a connection that I made to the work of Paul Caponigro. Whenever I was lost, dismayed and or depressed about my inability to move forward with my work, I would look back at an image such as this and remember the astonishment I felt when I realized PC was photographing a landscape that made sense to me. His photographs from The Maine Woods are in a book I have by him called Seasons, a beautiful little treasure of a book, sadly, now water damaged……but still treasured.

Seeing is an energy-rich undertaking. My photographs …….fingerprints.

I have moments when I believe I have become the person I thought I wanted to be. I wrote a letter home maybe thirty years ago. I said I didn’t know if photography would be enough to sustain me. I let fear answer. I’m 56 and the fear is gone, nice to meet you Don Wilson.

Two faces of depression….

Henri Cartier-Bresson, 1932

Untitled (158 of 486)

The year is 2017, so far from now it seems like a parallel universe. Near Rimouski, QC, Harold channels his Cartier-Bresson, Sony in hand. Henri Cartier-Bresson made his photograph using an early Leica 35 mm camera. The atmosphere in Bresson’s image is amazing, a delicate, luminous drift. Great photographs can ask a lot of questions!! Frustratingly…..we have to make-up the narrative.

Mifflin’s Tea Room, Bonavista Newfoundland. These are Tautons , bread dough that has been fried to a crispy, golden brown, yet remains soft and gooey on the inside! Add bacon, beans, toast, jam and coffee….heaven!