Sometime in 2015 I began packing up my gear to go outside and make portraits of people I didn’t know. It was only later that I realized that my Deep Park series was born from a need to create something meaningful in the face of a pervasive and inescapable political ugliness. It's no coincidence that my need to leave the insularity of my studio and go out to connect with "strangers" began in earnest during the campaign that led up to November, 2016.

Deep Park is an ongoing series of portraits of strangers I encounter in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, NY. The people I photograph become invested in the slow, mechanical, process of using old and outmoded film camera gear, mostly 8x10” sheet film. It becomes a collaborative effort as we talk and investigate each other. It is in this respect that my choice of gear was very specific. I knew that it would affect my encounters in a very particular way.

Prospect Park is the optimal microcosm of New York City’s diversity. My use of its natural assets as a backdrop somehow imparts additional political resonance, given that our public lands and environmental protections are eroding by the minute and climate change denial is now, incredibly, a governing principle. The park is a vast organism, fertile, with secret winding paths, and infinite textures and sounds. There are many unique 'neighborhoods' within it. It is very nuanced, just like the people who come to it.

The making of the photograph informs the final image. The process can effectively isolate us, as if an invisible room takes form around me and the people I am photographing. It all happens in a public space. I’m fascinated by how we construct private spaces within larger public spaces. It’s in these private spaces that we can safely forget who we are “supposed” to be. I tend to look for people who might already be in that space, and I approach them with care, trying not to break what they have built. That’s a good starting point.

I pretty much taught myself photography in my teens. I read magazines like Modern and Popular Photography, and later American Photographer, which helped a bit. That’s how I learned. Later, I attended the School of Visual Arts and got a BFA in Photography at New York University. I did some assisting for photographers like Neal Slavin, which was a disaster because I was always a nervous wreck. I also printed for the photographer Rosalind Solomon. I did the odd freelance photography job to help support my family. I was also the first ‘official’ photographer for the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, New York.

In the mid ‘80s I managed an art gallery in New York’s East Village. That was a vibrant time and place, with artists like Keith Haring, Basquiat, Cindy Sherman, Laurie Simmons and David Wojnarowicz making their mark on art and culture. Art was everywhere. In small storefront galleries, in tiny apartments made into makeshift galleries, on the streets, in music. Everywhere.