What you’re seeing is an overview of my lifelong passion…

Taking Snaps…Yeah, all the standard stuff applies here:

I took my first picture when I was being birthed. It was in my mind’s eye. It’s a picture of the nurses looking at me to see if I was breathing, but I was just holding my breath.

The doctor’s forceps almost poked me in the eye – an eye I would later need for focus. Then later, in elementary school, I had the first exhibition of my work. Using a self timer, I shot a series of candids in real time of the bully that always beat me up on the playground. I later studied still life under Sal DeBungwole at  Our Lady of Perpetual Emotion, College of Sights and Smells. Sal, now deceased, was  a graffiti artist and acclaimed second unit forensic and crime scene photographer who in the 30’s worked for the NYPD.  I also apprenticed with Norman Seeff by cutting his grass in the summer and doing general pool boy work until I was fired after “exposing “ myself to his clients. I even worked part time as a laundry worker at the Mustang Ranch to save up enough money to buy my first  decent camera , a Kodak x-15 , and I use it to this day.

I’m now in my golden years and a bit more settled and tired. When I’m not taking selfies of myself in bed I can be seen lurking around automated photo booths on N.J. boardwalks and local strip malls, soliciting models or providing fashion tips to the unsuspecting.

Edie Dapeach whose Prairie Dog portraits resemble Helmut Newton’s finest Nudes, has also been a big influence. My heroes however, are Jazz musicians. My work has been hung in the lavatories of some of the finest galleries in Trenton and Camden, and in washrooms in federal prisons nationwide. I’ve shot for magazines including Popular Spelunking and Cave Accidents Illustrated. My work is overpriced.

On a more personal level, I was abandoned young then raised in a convent with 120 nuns and 24 orphans. Most of my elementary education came from reading cereal boxes. DNA testing suggests I’m part Tulowa and part Yurok Indian (on my mothers side), and part Cro-Magnon and part Neanderthal (on my fathers side). I am a neurotic pain in the butt.

That encompasses me in a nut shell. Specifically, I cannot tell time unless it is digital and I have absolutely no sense of direction. You know the tractor trailers that carry the new cars? Well I always think one is going to fall off and hit me. I spit when I talk. Wooden Q-tips, Paregoric, and mercury rectal thermometers are my idea of nostalgia. Expiration dates on food have no meaning to me and I sleep in boxers but spend my days in g strings. I collect royalties on the song” Happy Birthday”. I brush my bottom teeth first, then my top. I put one pant leg on at a time. I drive a Pacer. My favorite color is see through . My strongest punch is a right hook. I’m breathing, have a pulse, and most mornings, I’m thankful to wake up alive. It gets me started in the morning.

I love to St Vitus dance and people love my boundless passive energy. I can be atrocious, and have a great tenor if not for my constant hacking cough. I would not fit into a particular category such as a photographer, varmint hunter, manho, social climber, or poser. Rather, I am all that plus so much more.

My interests, desires, goals and friends are an accurate picture of me, very perverse. I enjoy but cannot appreciate the finer things in life. I truly believe that the best things in life can be bought. I would like to find my female clone. There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t get approached in public with someone asking for my autograph, they think I am or look like Luis Guzman. And I’d have to agree, the resemblance is uncanny. .My favorite things : concerts ,being clean, Liberace ,Lola Falana, Captain and Tennille, Everyday obituaries. Eating Spam. Seven Eleven. Smores on gas grill, 100% polyester leisure suits, watching and learning from my turtle, chicken chow mein from a can.

Things not to ask me:

• What kind of camera do I use?..  I will tell you it’s my handy Kodak X-15 with flash cubes.
• How do I get so many people to take off their clothes?..  Answer: Money can buy anything
• How do I get him to shoot me?  Same answer as B.
• Will I shoot your sons or daughters wedding or Bar mitzvah?…don’t ask ..I might shoot you… dead.

Things to be aware of:
Many of the pictures were shot on film… not digital and are like me, are old and in the way.