This is a life-long project.   I was born and raised here, and started taking pictures when I was barely a teenager.  Though I’ve lived in many places since, I always go back to Steubenville and the Ohio Valley.

20 B&W Photos

with captions

34 photos

I was turning 21 and had to go see.  I left college, worked odd jobs, bought a small Leica CL that didn’t look worth stealing, and hitchhiked the country.

There was still an underground “counter culture” happy to pick me up.  But the police were hostile.

It was amazing how many different experiences one could have in a single day.

28 black and white prints

Don’t take your figure sculpture for granted.

15 Photos

Southern California is made by flames. Wildfires are as important as water.  They cannot be stopped.  If put out, they only come back stronger.

People continue to move into this landscape that loves fire.  So there are problems….

20 Color Photos

When I was growing up, the Ohio Valley was one of the most productive and prosperous areas of the world.  But by using the clever justification of “free trade”, conservatives succeeded in exterminating the unions. So today this beautiful  Valley is destitute, desperate, and depopulated.  The children who stayed behind now earn way less than their parents.  They don’t know what hit them.

27 B&W Photos

What could be more glamourous than a convention with “glamour” in its name?

Here’s one that was held next to the Los Angeles airport in 1997.

14 Photos

To be “Together Forever” is the supposed ideal of most couples. There is a desire to defy time, to go beyond even “till death do us part”.

For these pairs, their earthly demise was just another beginning.

18 Mixed Photos

Self-described as

“the world’s Premier Modern and Contemporary Art Show…

the place where the art world meets”

Here’s what I thought about it.

22 B&W Photos

After fire clears the way for new life, the recovery is spectacular, stark, and swift.

As this cycle continues…..forever.

24 Color Photos

The most beautiful spot in the most beautiful city in the world.

27 Photos

When Diana Spencer and two others died in the tunnel under Paris’s Place de Alma, grieved supporters spontaneously made the Statue of Liberty Memorial (Flamme de la Liberte) their own.

Soon after, during the winter of ’97-’98, I found myself living just around the corner.  The stream of diverse pilgrims came at all times, and from every direction, even though authorities tried to discourage them.

Eventually, the French were able to reclaim their site and surround it with a fence.

Few seek it out these days.

24 Photos

Democracy demonstration on the 3rd Anniversary of Tieneman Square.  At the time, Hong Kong had yet to be taken over by China.

Imagine the courage it took to come out then and show oneself.

Imagine the courage it takes to come out now.

The real deal.

These steep and scruffy mountains form the northern border of Los Angeles, but are too rugged to be developed. So instead, President Obama named them a National Monument in October, 2014.

The San Gabriels are a harsh, high desert range of sheer hillsides and landslides, wildfires, drought and flash floods.  Only an hour’s drive from 20 million people, the area is so remote that mountain lions roam. Hopefully, this new designation will keep it that way.

39 Color photos

20 Photos

Humans build shrines wherever they go.  These physical creations help connect us—to the other side, to God, to religion, to friends who have died.  They are the most personal and unique of memorials, utterly useless and terribly helpful.

And beautiful.

28 Mixed Photos

Most tourists leave, and the Parisians get their city back. Days are short, cold, often wet.
So it’s easy to love.

24 Photos

Western New York and this lake almost hibernate through these long months of soft light and degrees of snowfall, silence, and melt.

How can one not love a town where the only establishments open year round are the post office, the library, and a large bookstore?

The deepest canyon in the country, it’s high in the Sierra Nevada mountains and cut off by snow for half the year.

The only humans here are, like me, just passing through.

18 Photos

They put in the hours

and work the screens

for all of us.

Art Basel, Miami Beach

December, 2012

12 B&W Photos

Menerbes, an ancient mountain village in Provence.

1995

The smartest and most beautiful daughter in the world got married this June.

Here’s a best shot for every year she’s been on the planet.

28 Photos