Polaroid Journal excerpts (from the vaults)

For many years I kept a journal composed of polaroid images. I scanned these today.

This set is all from the 199o's


More about this work.


They don't make this film anymore... blogging has replaced the old handmade books.

It is what it is, and it ain't what it ain't. (Thanks to a lyric by Kevin Dudley)the 1990's

Newborn, mojo, a gambler, and handcuffs (from the vaults)

I just scanned four unrelated images from my files. They make a kind of sense to me today...

The baby is from a newborn unit in a hospital a while back, the woman gesturing powerfully was at a union gathering I covered, the gambler studying the racing forms was at Laurel Raceway in Maryland , and the handcuffs were on a wall at a prison in Baltimore.

All these photographs are outtakes from assignments

Crows over Przemysl/Red Thread (from the vaults)

My grandparents came from Bachow, a shtetl near the now-Polish city of Przemysl. My daughter and I traveled there in 1998.

These crows appeared in the graying sky as we first emerged from our vehicle, they were almost directly over Bachow.

Most of the family left in the great Jewish emigration at the turn of the 19th and 20th century. Some made it to Israel after World War II, but many perished in the Holocaust.

This material is from the project Red Thread.

There is an excellent blog chronicling the history of the Jews of Przemysl.
http://przemysl.blogspot.com

Southwestern light/mysteries (from the vaults)

Images from Big Bend, Texas and northern New Mexico, mid 1970's.

Wide open mind...

Soul Parking (from the vaults)

This sign was posted for years on 14th Street NW, Washington DC, just below Florida Avenue.

I heard some wannabe hipster DJ made off with it for their show a while back. Figures.

Nyabinghi Elders (from the vaults)

The Nyabinghi serve as wise elders to the Rastafarian community.

I photographed these men in Washington on assignment for the Washington City Paper.

True true true.

Two dogs (from the vaults)

Photographs from 1974 and 1997: Dizzy (barking), and my raffish Scottish terrier, Paddy Day, getting in my face.

Noise.

Operation Understanding DC / Class 17 training

The seventeenth year of this outstanding diversity education program for DC-area Jewish and African American high school students.
Visit www.oudc.org

Hoyer / Vilsack - assignment

I photographed the House Minority Whip, Congressman Steny Hoyer, and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack for the Appalachian Regional Commission today.

Flashmob outtakes

A few images that stayed with me from a recent assignment in DC for Advocates for Youth.

I Saw The Letter F in the Gutter

Seen near the site of a street shrine to Henry Kelly on Buena Vista Terrace, in SE Washington DC.

Homage to Charles Demuth's I Saw The Figure 5 in Gold, inspired by William Carlos Williams poem, "The Great Figure":

"Among the rain
and lights
I saw the figure 5
in gold
on a red
fire truck
moving
tense
unheeded
to gong clangs
siren howls
and wheels rumbling
through the dark city"

And, here, I found the letter F, in the gutter, a few sad steps from a murder site...