I am a native New Yorker and, uniquely, have connections to all three major universities: I hold a BA from New York University; an MA and PhD from Columbia University; and am a City University of New York professor emeritus.

I always wanted to have a camera as a child, but because of circumstances beyond my control, I did not get one until I was in my late thirties. This was a Kodak Instamatic, which I took with me on a research mission to southern Greece and Crete, and I was so pleased with the results that I soon acquired a more sophisticated camera and then others through the years. I became especially enamored of Kodachrome 64, and I don’t think that anything I’ve seen since comes anywhere near it where richness of color is concerned. I currently own a Nikon D-90 with a 18-200 lens and video capabilities, and a Canon Vixia HF10.

In 1997, I founded and became artistic director of The Lark Ascending, a small performance group based in New York City that was dedicated to bringing audiences readings of great literature and performances of related great music of the past. Both were illustrated by visuals, which I provided for the most part, these as projected color slides of my creation, at first on film, later via digital image. The slides were usually composites of original photos by me created by me in Photoshop. Particularly struck by the situation of unknown composers of serious music, who had and still have no way to speak for themselves, I developed the concept of the slide-choreorgaphy–literally a synching of illustrative slides to music–and my first works in that genre, to musical works by composers Dinu Ghezzo and Arnold Rosner, were performed at The Kitchen and New York University’s Black Box Theater in 1997. Other works followed, to music by composers Richard Brooks, Nicolas Flagello, and Elodie Lauten. To some of these, I added an illustrated reading of a poem. All were premiered as part of Lark Ascending programs and are currently in the Gallery of thelarkascending.org, which, incidentlally, I illustrated and co-designed.

In 2002, I wrote and illustrated the dramatic monologue, "Coeur de lion, Mon Coeur," my first performance piece, and it was given live as part of Lark Ascending programs four times from 2002 to 2004, at first with live period incidental music, the last time with original incidental music by Richard Brooks. It can be seen and heard in the Gallery of The Lark Ascending website.

Until 2007, the synching of my slides to music for the above-mentioned slide-choreographies was done in Flash by technicians Jonathan Edelman, Ivyan Espejo, and Alexej Steinhardt under my direction. In that year for my most recent work, "Textur" by Katerina Klement, which is presented here, I did my own synching via Proshow Producer. It was premiered “live” on April 9 and 17, 2008 at the Austrian Cultural Forum in NYC as part of Löwenherzen (Lionhearts), the last Lark Ascending program.

In 2009, I decided to revise the slide choreographies of the composers mentioned above and to start with the work by Ghezzo. As there are three mad-bird sequences in it, I will be incorporating video sequences of mad flocks of seagulls shot by my two cameras and madly edited in Premiere, which Proshow Producer allows one to do.

I am totally committed to the idea of the meaningful combining of the various arts, principally of literature, music, and visual art. Possibly I came to this idea via my study of William Blake in graduate school; both my master’s essay and doctoral dissertation were on him and have been published.

Looking back into the past and then at the present, I see that the Internet is the future where the arts are concerned...such future as mankind has.

Where my own development is concerned, I regard "Textur" as a beginning, a very modest one. My main visual device there is the cross-fade, which I employ the way Ken Burns does panning and zooming. Each slide is a composite of stills taken by me and carefully matched in Photoshop so that as the cross-fading occurs, a third image can be observed momentarily. While my future works, the revisions that I mentioned above, will be slide-based, they will be far more complex visually and will include video footage.

CREDITS:
Illustrated Dramatic Monologue:
--Coeur de lion, Mon Coeur–Gallery of thelarkascending.org

Slide Choreographies:
--Black-on-Black/13--Gallery of ttp://thelarkascending.org
--Verlaine Variations--Gallery of www. larkascending.org
--Ostinato–Gallery of thelarkascending.org

One Person Shows (Photography)
--“The World’s a Stage”-- Morgenthau-Frederics Gallery, NYC, April-June, 2004.
--"Greenwich Village Side Streets"--380 Gallery, NYC, December, 1982.
--"Out My Window"--380 Gallery, NYC, December, 1981.

Group Shows
–Three digital images--Gallery, NYC, Spring 2009.
–Three photos–Center for Photography at Woodstock, Spring 2002.

Permanent Exhibits
–Two Photos of Musicians–Maverick Hall, Woodstock, NY.
–Twelve Photos from “The World’s A Stage” --Sloan Kettering Hospital, NYC.
–Twelve Photos from Copan and Chichicastenango, and Greenwich Village--English Department office, College of Staten Island-CUNY.