ARTIST’S PREFACE

This part has become a preface to the preface below, written some years ago.

Now I often think of my view of the world, of humanity and of the cosmos that created us. Twenty-five years ago these seldom crossed my mind. But the changes of the last 50 years and especially so in the last 30 or so have created in me a a sadness and fear oioj f

How did I get here. 80th year, four or five careers, 20,000 sheets of 4 by 5 film exposed, incaluable time and effort spent with almost nothing planned.

When talking about my life I often say “I do what’s next” and that comes about as close as anything to what has guided me.

I am a second generation Pole. My four grand parents, all of whom I knew, were all born in what was nominally Poland, except that Poland was usually owned by someone else.

Before heading off to grammar school I might have been in a little corner of Poland except this was 82 Jenks Avenue, Central Falls, Rhode Island and everything was Polish. My father’s parents upstairs. Language, food, church, Saturday picnics, harvest festivals with dances and costumes, reciting poetry in Polish at every church gathering, and, of course, music.

Every Saturday my dad and I would head for a small record store in Providence and listen to a dozen or so 45 rpm records to find just the right rendition of a certain polka. Saturdays were Polish school, so I was mrginally fluennt.Dad was an accomplished engineer designing machines that knitted stockings and I was playing with a Brownie Hawkiee. He had access of all sorts of imaging stuff and so came the camera but all I did was try to get it to work. No. Luck. But taking pictures was fun, so next was black and white darkroom, an Olympus 35mm, a giant floor standing contacyt printer (I copied onto blavkc and white negative film the 5x5 ektachromes Bachrach made of our family. I still have them.

Then photography took a side road while I got hooked on electronics and audio. I learned piano. My father played violin and we played duets that he taught me. A few months ago I round a wonderful rtentition of Polish folk dance and song on U-Tube and in the middle of the Krakovyuak (the most famous of Poland’s five national dances) was a melody my father taught me. I was on the erge of tears. But that’ getting ahead of myself.

Music, electronics and being a crtazy enthuiastic audiophile and valedictorian of my high school class meant next was electrical engineering study. All my playing around gut me into MIT.

I was good engouh to get into grad school and gave solid =state physics a try but finally an ephimany struck and I knew I had to do what I loved and knocked on tyhe door of one Prof. Amar G. Bose.

But photography never went away. MIT had a student darkroom and Dr. Bose and I and a crew went off to Tangglwood to record the Boston Symphony Orchestra. And of course I gook photographs (not enough), developed and printed them.

Doing a doctoral dissertation would have stretched beyond 7 years at “ThR Institute” and that was a brick wall. Dr. Bose had become my mentor and advisor and when I told him enough was enough he asked me if I want43d a job and I befcsame the 5th employee of Bose Corporation. That’s right number 5. Last I knew there were 5000.

But there were all sorts of run=ins with color photogrtaphy. Trying to have a pro lab make a gift for my mother. She turned her nose up. And then a kind of blur in that I don’t really know the order of things.

An exhibit of dye transfer prints at South Station in Boston (of all places. Trackikng down more dyes at a gallery on Newbury Street and something was going on. I utterlyu loved the color. Like nothing I had ever seen before.

Then there was Eliot Porter. His books and the once=in-alifetime exhibit st the Met in New York, Intimate Landscapes. and the iconic photograph Redud Tree in Bottomland.

Newxt I knew it was back to a Speed Graphic borrowed from Bose and shooting my wife’s marigolds. Now I am in marketing and have professional photographer friends to deveop and print for me and one look at a contact print of all things of a marigold and somehting (clicked is the wrong word) fell into place. Working with top advertising photographer in Boston I knew what view cameras did (MIT kind of let me gloss over most technical obstacles) and I said to my Bose Corp friend Stan: “Lets gop to New York, I want to buy s view camera. We;; as O doscciss e;sewjere. O bpigjt a Ca;i,et bu ,ao; amd begam sjpptomg wjo;e lmpwomg tjat tjpse due tramsfer [romts wpi;d be tje pm;u wau tp gp amd wotj a ;ott;e de,p bu Bo;; Biti;er O klmew tje pm;u wau tp learn was in my own darkroom amd that meant a darkroom specifically designed from the ground up for dye transfer printing otherwise nothing would ever work. It took a year to build it and by then serious color landscape photography had burried itself in my soul. I trust you are as out of breath as I am, but that is about what doing whats net was like. In other words, I never said to myself: when here is the plan. I just did what was next. Anmd that is how I got to my 80th year with 48 years of photography and after a lab and a gallery in Worcester, and digital crushing dye transfer and EverColor I have a large house with a real gallery and most of the bottom floor fitted out for printing.

And as I type this on the viewing board with 5K lights next to my 30" calibrtated monitor a sample of a picture from Upperhadlowck Pond that is as good as a dye transfer would be. If it were digital. This is February 119, 2021 at 1320 with my 80th coing up (hopefully) on 9/11 nand my working on this site and printing 22x28 archive prints on my Epson P9000 and tryinng to avoid the virus. The details I try to fill in in other parts of this website. And mounds of chromes yet to comb through to find those worth digitizing and adding to the collection. Whew.

Music has stayed with me. In the fabulous 24x24 gallery music room upstairs, with its hardwood floors and 14 foot angled ceiling is a Mason and Hamlin BB seven foot (same as Steinway B but about 200 pounds heavier) and some Schjiuberty and Chopin and Beethoven waiting for my arthritic hands and nearly deaf ear, but even with my arthritic fingers it is another experience like no other. >p? Rvrepy yo watch the Masofsz Polish folk nd dance ensemble or Krystian imerman play Chopin over four Bose 901 speakers. Then back to printing. What a life. Oh, yes. Married Suisan (voice major and Mahler lover) in 1990 Acopted Gregfrom Russia in 1004. PhorofePHY gotr e ubto the St. Botolph Club in Boston and annual exhibits and two one person exhibits and meeting Yo Yo Ma and haveing house concerts with three of St. Botolphs artists and an all Gershwin 75th birthdaya with Geoff Hicks and .....Gomex.

only thing left is figuring out WHYH. Go to the end of this website and see another side of me as I try to figure out how the unierse works.

I can think of only one thing to add. People always say find something you love. Well pay attention so when it comes by you will know what to do next. And keep doing it or the other things you love all the time. And that’s the way it is. Friday February 19th. 2021... YThe rest is future however long that may be.