Nudes nominee

The Nude at Home


In this series, I use traditional 8 x 10 black-and-white film in a homemade oatmeal-box pinhole camera to create wide-angle distortions with the cylindrical focal plane. There is a sense of discovery and joy in this process, as the resulting images are unpredictable and surprising. The familiar becomes unfamiliar, the ordinary extraordinary. By then replacing the black-and-white values with subtle hues through successive pulling of curves in Photoshop, I interact with and interpret the image. The “Nude at Home” is a subset of a larger pinhole-camera project begun in 1998. In this series, I photograph the model nude in her own home, apartment, or studio, surrounded by her possessions for two-minute exposures. A collaboration between model and photographer, the images attempt to reveal an intimate portrait of the subject.

I studied Photography from 1962 - 1967 at the Institute of Design and the Art Institute of Chicago from 1967 to 1970. I began photographing the nude with Wendy, my wife, while in graduate school. Then for over forty years I explored various techniques and processes while photographing the nude as a central theme.
I currently head the photography program at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, New York.

In 1998 I began to work with pinhole photography using an oatmeal box pinhole camera. With its extreme wide angle and distortion, the camera gives me results that are constantly a surprise. I develop the B&W negatives, scan them into Photoshop, and then colorize the image by pulling curves in each of the channels.

From January to February 2010 I had a solo show at the Photography Center of the Capitol District in Troy, NY. I showed over fifty images from ten diverse series made from 1990 to 2010. And in May 2013 I have a solo show, “Nude at Home”, twenty-six images made from 2003 to 2012 at the Barrett Art Center in Poughkeepsie, NY.