Dmitri Kasterine

Kathryn Schulz

2012-01-24T16:19:00.000-05:00

Kathryn Schulz is the author of Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error.
She writes standing up at her Mac which lies on a bench exactly the right height for her comfort. She likes everything in place before she starts work. Disorder prevents words flowing.

Everything was in place when I arrived and I felt quite at home. She is very good at sketching and has a floor to ceiling blackboard on which she has drawn a family of leaping frogs. The cat has her own chair placed in front of a window.

Yunus, Kaan, Annette and Kamal

2012-01-23T14:58:00.000-05:00

Annette is Swedish and Kamal is Turkish. They live here in Garrison. I asked Annette if the children were trilingual. "The children are American—they speak a little bit of everything."

In 1964 I spent some time in Turkey photographing for the Turkish Tourist Bureau. One day I was on a beach of silver sand at Kizkalesi looking at the Crusader castle that lies 200 yards out in the Mediterranean sea. There was no-one on the beach except a fisherman with his rowing boat who had just landed his catch. He grilled me a sea bass. I have judged every fish I have eaten by this one. None has quite equaled it.

Kamal and his family recently spent eight months in Turkey. "The fish in Istanbul is still excellent," Kamal told me.

"The fish here in Garrison tastes of nothing." His eldest son Kaan added.

North Wales, United Kingdom

2012-01-02T22:09:00.001-05:00

Late afternoon, winter, late 1970s. On my way to house belonging to can't remember who for the weekend.

A steady gaze

2011-12-30T10:53:00.002-05:00

Here's something for the New Year—the steady gaze of a child.

Joy Setton at Fort Defiant Café

2011-12-28T09:28:00.000-05:00

This is a photograph of a stranger, but with the help of the staff at Fort Defiant Café in Red Hook, Brooklyn, I discovered that it is the writer Joy Setton. I took the picture a couple of summers ago and have since read her articles in Taki's Magazine. One that particularly struck me was about money in the art world from fifteenth century Florence to today. Amongst other aspects of banking then and today, she writes about usury, the origins of bankruptcy, letters of credit, how much gold a woman could wear, and, "Bankers in fifteenth-century Florence were so wealthy that even rulers envied them."
Click here for article in Taki's Magazine

Beacon shop keeper

2011-12-11T18:21:00.001-05:00

Main Street, Beacon, NY. Store owner takes a break to fix her hair and have a smoke.

Contentment at Homespun

2011-12-11T18:03:00.001-05:00

As the world knows, every other person in Beacon, NY is a refugee from Brooklyn. Our acquaintance who makes cowboy boots and children's shoes, and who recently moved into a loft in Newburgh (across the river) said, "When you can't afford to live in Bushwick, you know it's over." I wonder if these two once came from Brooklyn?

An hour before departure

2011-12-07T08:42:00.000-05:00

Caroline wondering if she won't cancel her trip to Italy because she may miss our dog Louis too much. She is sitting on the bench that I brought over from England 25 years ago and was nearly destroyed by a tree breaking it's back during a storm. It was put together by a local welder and I replaced the seat slats and repainted it.

Paola

2011-12-03T22:58:00.001-05:00

Caroline has gone to Southern Italy to see her aunts and cousins. The next five photographs were taken in 1989 when we were both there.

Before she left on her trip, I said that because I won't have to take her and collect her from the bus that she catches to commute to White Plains, I must make good use of that extra hour a day. "Re-calk the bath and put up the towel rack." she replied.

Carlo and Monica with friend

2011-12-03T20:13:00.001-05:00

I was photographing this young couple when we heard the tap and shuffle of cane and slippers. A man in a white shirt appeared. He spoke to my subjects, engaging them so that they no longer were paying attention to me. I asked him if he would like to join the group for a photograph.

Grandfather

2011-12-03T17:20:00.001-05:00

Caroline's grandfather spent more 20 years of his life in Brazil, away from his wife and family. When he came home to Malvito in Southern Italy, every day he walked the mile to the church and back. This was up a very steep hill. He was 99 years-old when he died.

Marta

2011-12-03T16:59:00.000-05:00

In the stables of the Baron's house. Plaster walls, virtually never to be seen here in the United States, now seldom seen in Europe. Light from a 5 foot square window.

I have used as a studio, since this was taken in 1989: the stables here, Sandy Saunders hayloft and the carriage house that is my current studio. All locations thanks to the horse.

Waitress

2011-12-03T16:46:00.001-05:00

A portrait from 1989 in Malvito, Italy.

Natalie Forteza, singer

2011-11-27T16:04:00.001-05:00

I have always liked being chauffeured by a good driver in a nice car. This happened to me last week when Natalie Forteza turned up to be photographed and gave me a lift to the studio. She had a small Volkswagen SUV. Plenty of room, smooth ride and quiet. Shan't be happy till we get one.

On the telephone Natalie had said, "I have asked my younger sister to meet us there—just to give me moral support." She turned up precisely at the appointed time, sat on a hay bale, out of sight and as quiet as a mouse.

Girl with short hair

2011-11-10T18:23:00.001-05:00

A fine day with a clear blue sky. We hear the sound of a light aircraft approaching. It comes into view at about 2000ft. Three bodies tumble from the plane. Three parachutes open and steer towards our field. They land, gather up their 'chutes and walk towards us. We recognize two adults and a girl of about fifteen. The woman is clutching two bottles of Bordeaux, and the girl a skateboard. Before we made lunch and opened the bottles I took this picture.

Matt Alexander

2011-11-10T17:30:00.000-05:00

Mayor of Wappingers Falls, NY, Democratic Congressional candidate for 2012. When asked where his favourite view of the Hudson River was he replied, "From a place in Cornwall, the classic view... they all painted from there in the 19th century... I grew up in Cornwall... You can see Anthony's Nose and Storm King."

Family group

2011-11-10T17:00:00.000-05:00

The suit does not mean that our son Nicholas has joined Goldman Sachs. He was back from California for his aunt's wedding and had to dress accordingly. It was more than my life was worth not to record this, as we seldom see him in anything as formal.

A rare gift

2011-11-10T11:30:00.000-05:00

Karen McCormack discovered that animals liked to talk to her when one morning she left the house and a hawk was sitting in the drive. Karen approached the hawk and saw that she had a carcass in her talons. The hawk was dragging it slowly away from Karen but she reached forward and tugged it from her. The hawk released the carcass as though she were giving her food to Karen. "I have just shown you something about the way we live," the hawk whispered, and flew away.

Karen began her intuitive life when she did Tarot readings, but soon gave it up because her clients became a nuisance by ringing her the day after their reading and complained that nothing had changed.

Lone croquet player

2011-10-25T19:37:00.001-04:00

The London Column , an online pictorial report from the life of the city, are publishing this week some of my photographs taken between 1964 and 1980. Here is one of a lone croquet player at the Hurlingham Club.

Blue, check and pink

2011-10-22T23:11:00.000-04:00

They arrived in a '90s Corolla, drawing up at the kerb beside us on Liberty Street in Newburgh. The girl with bronze hair sat in the passenger seat with her feet on the dashboard. She smiled. She said she had a son. "Where is he?" "With his father." A third person appeared from the back seat. We wandered around the street looking for somewhere to take the picture.

The young man, a fashion stylist who lived in East New York, Brooklyn, pointed across the street to a background he liked. I wanted the church doors where they would be lit by the sun reflecting off the buildings opposite. The young man said the particular church was not his religion but he did not mind if we used the doors.

They liked our dog Louis. Caroline took a picture of Louis and me with the three friends.

Felicity and Anna

2011-10-20T21:30:00.001-04:00

As we were chatting about my temporary studio—the potting shed at the Garrison Institute that was probably once a carriage house, I looked towards the place where I wanted my subjects to stand. A toad sat there. We stared at him for half a minute and he then lazily hopped on to the bricks and disappeared under one. He did not reappear so we got on with the photography.

Massage therapy

2011-10-11T15:01:00.001-04:00

We were looking for an unused or disused industrial building in Newburgh NY in which to display my photographs of the city next summer, to coincide with the publication of the book. We passed this young man having his shoulders massaged.

Man of purpose

2011-10-03T10:17:00.001-04:00

Indeed. 15 or so years ago he started Grey Printing in the sleepy old town of Cold Spring, NY, full of musty antique shops. Grey Zeien, then still running an advertising agency in New York City, moved in the latest printing, copying and scanning equipment, and employed Ruth Eisenhower, who is still there. Over the years Ruth decorated the place with four by six color snapshots that she took of everybody who came into the shop. They are strung overhead and stuck to every wall—thousands of them. Ruth adds to the collection each week.

Grey sold his agency a year before the tumble and devotes his time to advising people on their perfect binding, cards, signs and banners. and to his art, recently displayed in neighboring Beacon, and permanently on view at his online gallery, which you have to wipe you brow in relief at seeing a website so simple and beautiful in design.

Leader of the pack

2011-10-02T14:42:00.001-04:00

I was photographing a friend sitting outside a gallery in Beacon, NY where his work is on display when Caroline noticed Megan. She was locked in a kiss with a boy but they eventually released each other and I was able to ask if I could photograph them. Her boy friend did not want to but Megan and her sister and friend agreed to it.

Our new friend

2011-09-27T22:31:00.000-04:00

We became friends sitting round a table for 8 at the annual farmers' market dinner in Garrison. The table was nearest the bar and furthest from the band. 2 weeks later he and his wife and their 2-year-old arrived at the studio punctually at eleven.

Same girl, different chicken

2011-09-27T18:52:00.000-04:00

Same girl eighteen months older, different chicken in new location. Daylight from windows down the entire side of an old carriage house: my studio until my fingers freeze to the camera.

The shot I missed was of her father carrying the chicken in a cage covered with a scarlet cloth across a wide lawn in the rain.

Assistant

2011-09-12T21:46:00.000-04:00

This photograph was taken in 1986. It is a Polaroid of my assistant at the time. A year later we were married. It was taken in my studio on Lafayette Street, NYC and was the first photograph I took of her. Caroline loves to take pictures herself now and last week I assisted her—mostly carrying the tripod and camera bag.

Young chef

2011-09-11T11:55:00.000-04:00

I sat in my studio of the day (a 40ft potting shed lit by a bank of windows down one entire side), waiting for Laura to finish preparing cucumbers in the kitchen where she works at the Garrison Institute. She walked in and stood in front of me. "Where do you want me?"

"There, by that pile of bricks. Stand there, just the way you are standing now."

George Carlin

2011-09-08T22:08:00.001-04:00

Our 20 year-old son Nicholas left for Heavenly, Lake Tahoe, California 2 days before the storm. He said he was now ready to live alone, away from home, because he had listened to Mr. Carlin's monologues. These, he said, had equipped him with the wisdom to enable him to live a prosperous and fulfilling life. We left on the best of terms because I told Nicholas how much I had enjoyed my hour with Mr. Carlin in 1985. I have now begun to listen to the broadcasts on YouTube myself, and although I recently had my 79th birthday, I may still be able to benefit from some of Mr Carlin's perception.

Waiting for winter

2011-09-06T16:05:00.000-04:00

At the waterfall towards the end of summer before darkness and chill take over, when companionship, fires, candlelight and books will keep us charged.

Romanian artists

2011-09-06T15:11:00.002-04:00

I went to photograph a Romanian artist in Newburgh, NY but found two—both sculptors and brothers.

Constantin, on the right, said, "I knew it was time to leave Romania when my 6 year-old daughter came home from school one day and reported that her teacher had told her that the President was her father and the President's wife was her mother." That was thirty years ago.

By plane from Romania, Constantin landed in Florida. "I breathed the air and took the next plane out. It happened to be going to Whitehorse in Canada, on the borders of Alaska. I spent three or four happy days in an igloo. I wanted to stay but my wife did not."

Constantin makes a parachute jump once a month. "Just for the thrill of it. My wife doesn't like me to do it."

American soldier

2011-09-06T11:24:00.000-04:00

Constantin Radu: "My studio is full of all sorts of crazy things, but I don't like modern. Two railway tracks like this." He raised his arms and crossed them in front of his body and shook his head.

Grey and gold

2011-09-05T23:53:00.000-04:00

Humid day in Newburgh.

Sandy Saunders

2011-08-15T03:50:00.000-04:00

Telephone call last week from Sandy to say that I must go and see the cow parsley in his top field. As beautiful as it was, as soon as I saw it I wanted to include a person. Sandy, the guardian and farmer of the land immediately came to mind. Here he is at 7.15 in the evening, just returned from bringing in the last of the hay and mercifully keeping still for one-half a second.

"This field will make good silage."

Longish hair and hay

2011-08-14T17:15:00.007-04:00

We returned to the farm after photographing in the cow parsley to find Matthew, one of Sandy's helpers, standing by the barn. Sandy had warned him that I was on the hunt for more farm subjects and asked him to wait. I looked at the sky. We had 10 minutes, that's enough time. I dug the legs of my tripod into the mixture of hay and manure outside one of the stable doors and screwed on the camera.

Glass polisher

2011-08-14T14:22:00.012-04:00

One evening at our favourite (and almost only) restaurant, we noticed a new waitress. Her duties included polishing glasses which she did with the best glass polisher, a good linen napkin. Her actions were swift and thorough; her concentration unwavering.
"Do you ever break one?" (The glasses are particularly fine at this place.)
"Sometimes," she answered shyly. "Then it's usually a Champagne glass, the tall, thin ones." We returned at 4.30 a few weeks later and I photographed her during preparations for dinner.

Girl on a pink bench

2011-08-06T12:02:00.009-04:00

"Smile and ask her." I said to Caroline. I sat in the car exhausted from driving to Pennsylvania and back the day before, then playing tennis, followed by a disturbed night. Our dog Louis tried to scare away coyotes by barking at them with his head stuck through the cat flap.

As I sat in the car I thought how unlikely it was for the girl in pajama bottoms, who had disappeared into the laundrette in Beacon, to say no to being asked by Caroline and Louis if she would have her picture taken. Louis, now an invaluable member of the team, trotted towards the launderette guided by Caroline. It was as good as done.

Land Girl

2011-07-28T12:17:00.001-04:00

Shelley walked into Sandy's barn just as I was about to start photographing Ben last weekend.

She loves farms, particularly Sandy's: "The most beautiful place on earth," she calls it. And she loves farm work.

I was a child in the 1940's in England during WW II, living in Kent surrounded by farms. Almost all the work on them was done by women and old men — the women were Land Girls from The Women's Land Army. They stooked the wheat, barley and oats, dug the ditches, fed the horses, milked the cows, baled and stacked the hay and drove the tractors. Above is a Land Girl seventy years on in the uniform of today. And below is the original.

Shelley is also training to be a nurse.

Young Enlishman again

2011-07-27T15:10:00.003-04:00

Kit and his father liked this shot better than the one below. The side light has narrowed his face. And he looks comfortable amongst the indecipherable graffiti symbols.

Young Englishman

2011-07-27T15:09:00.002-04:00

Fifteen year-old Kit, on a visit from London to see his father who lives in Beacon, NY. I photographed them together but liked this shot the best. It was the last I took. Just as I was about to take the camera off the tripod Kit spoke to me about his love of landscape photography and settled his weight on one foot with his hands behind his back like a leaning tree that had been severely pruned.

Ben

2011-07-27T15:05:00.001-04:00

I got a call from Caroline. "You gotta come and see this. A couple are getting married at the waterfall. Wading into the pond fully clothed, followed by the reverend." I was too late to see the service. Ben and his friend Maria were not guests, just happened to be there, cooling off on a very hot day.

I took their picture the following day in Sandy's barn which I turned into a studio amongst the hay bales, The subject was lit by the light from an eight foot by ten foot door. Joy for a photographer who does not like lugging lights around. But anyway, what light has been made to equal the quality of north light from the sky? Here is Ben alone. Ben and Maria another day.

Square format

2011-07-27T14:55:00.000-04:00

Is her expression a show of firmness of character, or an unflinching contempt for the lens?

Woman with husband

2011-07-27T14:00:00.002-04:00

We first saw her with her two children sitting in the shade listening to guitar music at the farmers' market. The way she sat reminded me of a photograph by August Sander called The wife of painter Peter Abelen and her daughter. Her looks too are similar — lean, closely cropped hair, relaxed limbs. Not as cross looking though.

Woman with shoes

2011-07-25T21:52:00.015-04:00

I asked her on the telephone what she was going to wear. "I like orange," she said. "That's fine," I said, lying. Then later when she stepped out of her car I saw what a good choice she had made.

Woman with children

2011-07-25T21:52:00.013-04:00

The boy wanted to explore the barn. I told him there was nothing there except junk; mostly old mowers that went back to the 1940's. That only encouraged him so I told him there was a ground hog that lived there who did not want to be disturbed. He did not like the sound of that and returned to his mother.

Picture from an exhibition

2011-07-19T21:33:00.017-04:00

We sat in the heat at the side of the dirt road leaning back against the grassy bank with Louis our dog at our feet. We were, at least, in the shade. To our right the road stretched away up a hill for a quarter of a mile. My subject, a young man and his girl friend from Beacon, had lost their way and we sat at the junction of the road where they would have to turn to reach the barn that was my studio for a weekend. A car approached and I wave. It draws up and it is not them.

A man lowers the driver's window.

"You want a lift?"

"No thanks, we are waiting for my subjects. I am going to photograph them in the barn over there."

"You're a photographer?

"Yes."

"There were some really great portraits at an exhibition at the Garrison Art Center last week. I was there.""They were his," said Caroline, leaning towards me.

"Really?"

"Yes." I said.

There we were, sitting in the dust like a couple of exhausted hitchhikers, wondering how we were going to pay the rent and feed the dog when a stranger tells us how much he liked the photographs he saw at an exhibition that barely sold a single print.

Dewey Bunnell and Gerry Beckley

2011-07-18T15:56:00.008-04:00

"Good band," said my thirty-year-old acquaintance who told us that he woke up one morning the manager of a bunch of metal bands. "America? One of the best." My son Nicholas and I were resting on a bench at the local tennis courts where the metal manager and his friends were waiting to play. I told him of my recent encounter with the music world when Gerry Beckley and Dewey Bunnell performed in the neighboring town of Peekskill on their 40th anniversary world tour. Gerry had found me on the web and I photographed them one mild spring morning at the edge of the Hudson River. The picture appears on the back cover of their latest CD "Back Pages".

They have recently been honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Studio for a day

2011-07-15T09:39:00.001-04:00

Below are two photographs that I took in this barn. I borrowed it for a day to photograph the owner Sandy Saunders and his ninety-five year-old mother, Risi. Later in the day I did the celebrated riding instructor and breeder of Morgan horses, Leona Dushin, eighty-five. The second floor loft was empty because the recently mown hay that will be stored there, was not yet dry.

I am hoping that there will still be room to photograph people when the hay is dry, baled and stacked inside. I have been long looking for such a place. I love the light from the open door; it is soft, yet sharp and crisp, and there is plenty of it. I find the clip-clop of the horses hoofs on the concrete floor below very comforting.

Risi and Sandy Saunders

2011-07-11T18:10:00.001-04:00

She climbed the steep wooden steps up to the second floor loft without fuss, holding firmly to Sandy's hand and then mine as she reached the top of the stairs. A moment's positioning and a plea from me not to let go of the way she was gripping her son and the picture was taken.

Sandy's family have farmed and lived on the property for 200 years, where he has a herd of Black Angus cattle.

Equestrian star

2011-07-11T15:56:00.006-04:00

Leona Dushin wanted to be photographed as a 1920's flapper. I said I thought riding clothes more suitable. She is known and loved for her riding skills, both as a performer and as an instructor. Teaching children is her passion.

I have not seen it, but I would be suprised if she could not now, at the age of eighty-five, still perform the routines she did for the Ringling Brothers Circus when she nineteen.

Wedding anniversary

2011-07-08T12:35:00.006-04:00

Everybody deserves a restorative lie down with their dog after a day's work, and especially after twenty-three years of marriage.

Young girl with props

2011-07-06T11:21:00.005-04:00

With no help, except to ask someone to straighten her wig, this child devised and found her own props. The occasion of the photograph was the recent Garrison Art Center fundraiser where I took portraits of the guests — mostly with their dogs and their own hair.

College friends

2011-07-03T18:54:00.007-04:00

Having sworn I would never photograph any more people against the unrelenting green of the Hudson Valley summer landscape, I yesterday drove around and found a no longer used car wash at the local gas station. It had good light, a neutral background and a manager who was delighted that it was going to be of some use to somebody.

Caroline was with our dog Louis frog hunting at the waterfall the day before, when one of the three or four young people splashing around in the pond hailed her. It was the girl on the right in the picture. Caroline remembered her as a child of ten. The other girl in the picture, also cooling at the waterfall, is her friend of five years with whom she shares an apartment in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.

Born to be Wild

2011-06-27T10:08:00.006-04:00

Gay Pride Parade, 1987, Washington Square Park, NYC. They were calm and affectionate, not shouting demands or slogans, just loving being there with each other. I hope they have been happy these last twenty-four years.

Sixteen year-old

2011-06-12T22:49:00.008-04:00

If there is any success in this photograph it is due to the calm of the sitter and her choice of colors, both of her hair and her dress. Her hair, of course, is the luck of her birth, but her dress is her sense of style she has developed.

She sings solo for her school, the national anthem at special events, and in chorus at concerts, lately at Carnegie Hall. She cooks desserts and speaks French with her mother. Loves English and liked, "seeing herself in a new light."

Raymond Carver

2011-05-25T10:15:00.002-04:00

Today is his birthday. He once said, "I am beginning to feel like a cigarette with a body attached to it." Not about this photograph but spoken to his very first interviewer in 1977, as reported in the introduction to Conversations with Raymond Carver, edited by Marshall Bruce Gentry and William L. Stull. I took this picture in about 1985 in his garage at his house in Syracuse, NY. A print of it is now in the permanent collection at The National Portrait Gallery, DC.

At Pain Quotidien

2011-05-25T09:28:00.008-04:00

They had been enjoying themselves and had not stopped talking. Now it was time for them to settle up and concentrate on the business in hand. A moment's silence and also they were still. Click.

Rain on 5th Avenue

2011-05-16T14:03:00.007-04:00

She protested for a moment against having her picture taken but her friend wanted it and she gave in. You do, we thought, attract attention if you dress well.

A donkey ride

2011-05-13T14:19:00.005-04:00

The man's hand has a gentle but firm and reassuring pressure on the donkey, guiding it through the thin crowd of bathers and spectators. His stick keeps the animal going at a fast walk. Scarborough, Yorkshire, England, 1980.

Young musician

2011-05-04T16:33:00.007-04:00

We went to the recording of one of Bravo's art reality shows "Work of Art" and Caroline spotted this girl in the crowd. She knew her as one of the children of a very musical family in Garrison. I went round to their house a few Saturdays ago and her mother was the perfect mother-of-a-beautiful-daughter-being-photographed. "I'd like to be a bit higher up." I murmured. A stool was produced in a matter of seconds. Not just a stool that a-wobble-and-you're-off-it, but a three step ladder that nobody can fall off. The girl took no notice of her mother. I was the conductor that day and her eyes were glued to the camera and her mother was invisible to us both. And when I asked for a black shirt mum and daughter agreed without fuss as to which one they thought I would like.

Lily

2011-04-24T12:16:00.008-04:00

Lily, a grandchild, photographed in London also. "Where am I?" she asked on seeing the picture of her brother Louis posted here two weeks ago. Keeping all good things to last is my answer.

Sam Pemberton

2011-04-24T12:12:00.007-04:00

Soccer loving ten year-old Sam, photographed on my recent visit to London.

Cap and hood

2011-04-24T10:43:00.002-04:00

High school friends on Main Street, Beacon NY.

Draftswoman and soap maker

2011-04-23T21:52:00.013-04:00

When asked by Caroline if I could photograph her, she replied, "I mean, I have totally never had a good picture taken of me."

Gwen is an architectural draughtswoman during the day. At night she goes down into her basement and makes soap and oils that smell deliciously of lavender and geranium.

She sells them regularly at the Beacon farmer's market and online at:
http://www.etsy.com/shop/beyondthepicketfence

Caroline had mentioned her as a possible subject several times and this weekend we found her at a craft fair in Beacon. I pulled gently on her arm protesting that we both thought she had a wonderful face. Could she please spare five minutes, ask her friend to look after the stall and come with me.

I had found a place with good light two doors down in the entrance to an empty store.

The spare chair

2011-04-18T22:16:00.007-04:00

At Le Pain Quotidien, Madison Avenue. A late breakfast. Fun place. Wonderful apricot jam and perfectly boiled eggs. Groups and couples talked earnestly and cheerfully. Strangers in good spirits introduce each other at the long communal table. Then glancing over my shoulder, I saw a quite different mood.

Girl at the Frick Collection

2011-04-17T15:08:00.012-04:00

Downstairs where the kitchens once were I suppose, the Frick has put together an exhibition of drawings and etchings by Rembrandt. I loved the self portraits. They were a little difficult to see on Saturday because many are only inches big and people like to step close to examine them thoroughly and you have to wait your turn.

Upstairs we looked at the Rembrandt paintings. As dark as some are, made more so by the low lighting, they held us. Richard Avedon adored the youth on the old nag (The Polish Rider) trotting off to find his fortune. It inspired him as a young man going out into the world.

Admiring it and other old masters was a girl strolling between one painting and another with her audio tour pressed to her ear. She stopped by her mother or father and spoke for a moment before skipping to the next painting. It was her father who first lowered his hand set long enough for me to introduce myself. I asked him if I could photograph his daughter. He agreed and so did she and they obligingly interrupted their viewing of the paintings.

We crossed 70th Street. I asked the girl to stand under the awning of an apartment building. As I was thinking that I liked the clip in her hair, her mother stretched out an arm and removed it. "You don't want this clip, do you? I have a photograph that I like of her at home where she is wearing it. The clip has always irritated me." This was not the moment to argue I thought.

Margaret Drabble

2011-04-03T00:12:00.001-04:00

Because I will be discussing Margaret Drabble in my April newsletter I am posting this picture as a teaser. The reason will be revealed on April 8th.

Liking daylight more than any other light source, and used together with no background clutter, I look for windows near blank walls as soon as I arrive in someone's house. I would have liked to have made the right side of the wall a little darker with a four by two foam core to block off some of the light, but even carrying in a foam core, which weighs about as much as a sheet of newspaper, was apparently too much for me that day.

Comfortable on stone

2011-04-01T23:27:00.002-04:00

She was sitting in the back of a café in Springfield Massachusetts writing. We sat at a table nearer the front. She never looked up from her notebook until, quite suddenly, she closed the book, got up from her chair and stepped towards the door. She passed our table looking neither to the left or right nor saying a word to anyone. I lost my nerve at the sight of this forbidding young woman dressed entirely in white. She disappeared out of the door. Well, I thought, that was that. A chance to photograph someone special gone. You idiot, why didn't you just get up and say something to her? Anything. But to sit there in silence, watching her go by...

Before we left the café I asked at the counter if they knew who she was. "Oh, yes! She comes here all the time."

"May I leave her a note?"

"Certainly, I'll be sure she gets it."

A week later the telephone rang and several weeks after that Elizabeth turned up on the train for lunch, with her two-year-old son. This is one of the photographs I took. We soon discovered that she was far from forbidding; she just had had things on her mind. Caroline and Elizabeth became friends and, as she reminded me the other day, Elizabeth and her son came to my sixtieth birthday party and visited us on other occasions for summer weekend lunches.

Nearly twenty years later she still sends us a Christmas card every year from her home in Virginia, where she married and had a second child.

What do you want?

2011-03-24T18:26:00.000-04:00

This is Louis, my daughter Cathy's son, taken in London where I gave a talk at the National Portrait Gallery last month. Louis enjoyed the evening because my son Nicholas wore a tie, and that, thought Louis, is exactly what I am gong to do. He wore it for a while and then had an even better time whirring it around his head.

Before the talk I wrote out in longhand a good deal of what I was going to say but decided not to use the script, nor did I use the headings I had made. A talk is a talk and not a lecture or a speech. I began by recounting my feeling of hope that the gallery would call and say that a dissatisfied visitor had attacked the photographs on the walls with his umbrella and the talk was cancelled. We could all then go straight to the Chinese restaurant. My point was that it is about the same strain to face giving a talk as it is taking a portrait; half of you is fearful of it and wishes it cancelled.

Calm moment

2011-03-24T15:51:00.008-04:00

This is Maya, my son Alexander's eldest daughter. She is bilingual in French, Spanish and English. She lives near Geneva, Switzerland. Her mother is Chilean and an artist. Maya was sitting at the refectory table in Cathy's house in London, under an overhead light, when I noticed her expression.

Student

2011-03-01T22:39:00.004-05:00

She lives in Crown Heights with her mother in the same apartment in which she was born, eighteen years ago. She wants to go to Suny, New Paltz, in upstate New York. "Beautiful place, I love it." But she is not sure her mother can pay for it.

"For many months I have been looking for work. I cannot find any."

Words couple

2011-03-01T22:00:00.009-05:00

They were sitting on a bench on Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn. I wanted to snap them as they were. She was massaging his temples tenderly but the background was a car with disturbing color and contrast. I asked them if I could photograph them in the shade of a tree close by. He replied first, "I would love that." She said, "Awesome." Later they told us that he got headaches and she got rid of them for him. They both love words. She works for a literary agent and he for a magazine about infrastructure. I asked him if he studied engineering at school. "No, comparative literature." "What is that?" Caroline asked. "It's not anything," he replied. They loved Crown Heights and later we saw them again as we headed towards Breukelen Coffee House, a haunt they too like.

Israeli student

2011-02-28T18:12:00.006-05:00

Today the sun was out and it was almost warm. The pictures I took were in the shade of buildings, in this case the Brooklyn Public Library, with sun bouncing off the light paving in front of it, to produce a perfectly even light.

She was brought up on a Kibbutz, still lives in Israel on a Kibbutz, but a different one. She is visiting Brooklyn and will stay as long as she is allowed by her visa. I asked her if she would have to return to Israel to do national service. She said yes. "Meanwhile I have my sister's army jacket to keep me warm."

She was delighted when Caroline asked her if I could photograph her. Yet she was modest and a little shy.

Winter evening

2011-02-20T22:28:00.004-05:00

Winter is still with us. The drive is a sheet of ice, but Nicholas can lift a 70lb bag of sand as easily as if it were a can of tennis balls. We are eeking out the dwindling wood supply and tracking down under $10 wine. Latest finds are the best this winter: Beaujolais Village Chateau de la Carelle, $9.00; Sangre de Toro, $7.50; Ciconia, $7.00. No prizes for guessing where you buy them. Not long now and we shall be rolling in the mud.

Shoulder scars

2011-02-20T10:25:00.004-05:00

The button reads: God and I / Will handle what / ever happens / Just for today. The man told me he got the scars from a fall from a kitchen table where he was helping with meals for the homeless. I was reminded of this photograph because a friend wrote to say that he had spied it on my website and wanted to know what was written on the button. See comment below.

Young woman with hands clasped

2011-02-19T18:55:00.000-05:00

Some times I just want to post the picture and say nothing.

Matinée Idol

2011-02-15T17:12:00.011-05:00

An empty Newburgh... just a few stalwart figures chipping away at the ice and snow in front of their houses. I was about to give up finding a subject when this hat and lean face under it caught the corner of my eye as I drove by. I walked up to him and said hello. He wouldn't mind his picture taken he said. When I asked about the perennial matter of work in Newburgh, he said, "Here you either look for work or you hustle. I'm a hustler so I don't have that problem." I finished photographing him and he shook my hand and said, "I must be off to the library before it closes."

Ken Dodd remembers

2011-02-03T18:10:00.000-05:00

Ken Dodd is sitting in his old primary school playground in Knotty Ash near Liverpool, England. This is one of a series of comedians in a reflective mood that I photographed in the 1970's. I do not know if his fame reached these shores, but Ken Dodd has sold over 100 million records and at the height of his fame was a household name in England that equaled the Beetles. He is still touring at the age of eighty-four. My idea of doing the comedians with their mouths shut was embraced by the art director, but the editor, when he saw the photographs, shook his head and doubted he could run them. But he did and the art director remained in his job and I continued to work for him.

Long distance runner

2011-02-01T18:41:00.012-05:00

My assistant Nicole was driving up Third Avenue. She stopped at a red light and there was a tap on the window. She knew the young woman who was standing there, but was not happy to see her and refused to open the door or lower the window. Nicole drove off as the light turned green.

Twenty blocks later Nicole sat at another red light. Her eyes were raised waiting for the green. Then a vague shadow of a person appeared in the corner of her eye and she turned. There to her astonishment was her friend beside the car. Passion, fleet of foot, and endurance had won the day. The young woman had run the twenty blocks and caught up with the car. Nicole gave in. Smiling she opened the door for her.

When Nicole told me the story she asked if I would like to photograph this champion. One afternoon we drove to the Bronx and photographed her in her apartment.

1920's wedding

2011-01-30T22:36:00.001-05:00

Forty five years after my brief sojourn photographing weddings in England, I find myself at City Hall, New York City, with the daughter of a friend and her husband to be. They want a picture on the Brooklyn Bridge. I did that later, after the legal conditions were met. Here they are standing in front of the Justice of the Peace, just as the groom is being told, that now they are married, he may kiss his wife. He obeyed. In many ways this was one of the best weddings I have ever been to, or photographed. The father of the bride collected Caroline and me in his comfortable car, drove us to the city with the bride and groom, gave us a wonderful lunch and drove us back to Garrison.

Going away separately

2011-01-28T22:14:00.000-05:00

A bride and groom leaving the Hyde Park Hotel in London for their honeymoon. She isn't sure whether the man clutching her is not a better bet, and he thinks another drink (but probably not his last), will help things along.

Seven-year-old writer

2011-01-10T10:33:00.018-05:00

On the cheese counter line at Fairway in Red Hook, Brooklyn, a father and his seven year-old daughter waited their turn. Caroline, who was behind them, was taken by their warm relationship and the little girl's liveliness and good looks. They began to talk to each other. He was English, and by chance, lived as a child in the street adjoining mine in London. Caroline told him that she thought I would like to photograph his daughter.

And so it was that last Saturday we met for a sandwich at The Hope and Anchor and to take a photograph. The place was packed, but a slim, quiet and polite young man immediately took care of us and showed us into the back room. As soon as we were settled the girl took a notebook from her satchel and started work with a pencil. "I'm writing a book," she said. "Actually, at the moment, I am working on The Table of Contents." Then she read us the first paragraph of the book: "The dark crept into a light corner where Judy was sleeping. No-one could hear the loud moans of the dog. When a piece of the sun popped out of the air it bounced off clouds in a fast speed. It landed with a thump. It was a glowing ball as bright as a star but more. It started to grow into a flower. Everything was dark. The flower was sucked into the ground. Judy and her 2 brothers started to wake up."

She ordered pancakes and bacon and as she ate, she chatted and wrote. I looked around and saw behind me an empty table in good light which the management warmly welcomed me to have my subject sit at, whenever I was ready to take the picture. The light came from a glass door into the street and a mixture of coloured and regular tungsten lights from the room.

The girl suddenly said, "I thought we were here to have my photograph taken and all we have done is talk, talk." She had talked as much as any of us and had also been busy devouring the extra bacon that she ordered with her pancakes.

I was ready, and without any fuss she sat where I asked her to and she sat how I asked her to. The other customers looked and smiled as I am sure everybody does when they see this radiant, high-spirited girl.

Woman enjoying life

2011-01-02T15:24:00.011-05:00

Cigar smoking, cookie eating, happy as a lark woman, outside 84 Diner in Fishkill, NY. I wanted to go somewhere big and busy. Here it was, the diner I had passed a hundred times on my way to Newburgh, where the parking lot is always full and you get exactly what you expect in huge quantities, served by waitresses who weave through the tables and past each other at the double. A granny, with a tender hold on her grandchild's hand is given, with a reassuring smile, the right of way in this whirlwind traffic of nimble plate carriers, as the waitress stops dead to let her safely through.

Hood and scarf

2010-12-29T17:00:00.001-05:00

They were sitting in the farthest and darkest corner of Park Slope's al di là Trattoria. I had my back to them, but Caroline said I should photograph them. As they rose to leave she was up and asking them. I saw their strikingly pale and unblemished complexions, one in a hood and the other bare-headed, but wrapped several times in a scarf, like an inflatable ring worn by those in the water who cannot swim. They stood outside against the window of the restaurant lit by the veiled winter sun of the late afternoon.

Couple by street light

2010-12-22T22:19:00.008-05:00

I'd like to know more about these two. Sometimes I'm only interested in the shape or expression of people I photograph. But with these two, I would like to know more, because she is dressed differently from him, more formally and with a bag and scarf, and he is in just a thin sweater. Also she spoke not a word to me, yet he was warm and forthcoming about having the picture taken, but as it was nearing eleven o'clock and they had not eaten, I could not keep them any longer. I had already dragged them out from their table that they had just settled into.

Ryan again

2010-12-21T23:08:00.010-05:00

As his café (it will be his in the middle of January) is the best in Cobble Hill for oatmeal, coffee and lightening polite service, we are swept there by a current of past memories. And you only have to glimpse him and something about his appearance causes you to grope for your camera. Last week it was the red and black hat.

Two elbows, one bottle

2010-12-21T22:37:00.007-05:00

In order for a digital camera to see to focus in low light it has to be assisted by a spotlight built into the camera that shines without your asking when the subject is too dim for the automatic focus too cope. This is very irritating and can ruin the shot. Here the subjects were so absorbed in each other that if you had shone a search light at them they would not have noticed.

The photograph was taken at Marlow and Sons in Williamsburg, a place where they understand the romance of candlelight (the whole room is more or less lit by candlelight), the right music, making people feel welcome, and service.

Surprise

2010-12-21T22:12:00.006-05:00

You seldom know what people are talking about or feeling when you are observing them. Before I took this picture, I had been watching the couple and I thought from their expressions that they didn't know each other well. They were being polite and careful. After this show of aggressive surprise, I am not sure.

Smoking lovers

2010-12-12T14:52:00.004-05:00

In this photograph, taken in London in the buffet of Waterloo station, thirty years before I took the couple at Diner (above), there is more expectancy than surprise in the young lady's expression, and not a scrap of aggression. In fact, even without their shared love of tobacco, they seem made for each other. You could not be sure of that in "Surprise". Those were still the days when it was polite to light your girlfriend's cigarette for her and always before your own. And there is more in her look than the sweet anticipation of that first delicious drag on her cigarette.

Young man with skateboard

2010-12-11T22:26:00.009-05:00

I heard the rattle of skateboards as we crossed the road on Lorraine Street in Red Hook and turned to see three teenagers on their boards in the middle of the street. There was one tall, thin rider that caught my eye. I did not see his face but I shouted and waved "Hello." They stopped. I asked one of them, "Do you like dogs, he's friendly." as Caroline and Louis caught up with us. They stopped and they all liked Louis. I went up to the tall thin rider. He agreed to be photographed. He had grown up with dogs. This was their favourite street to skate on. Not very much traffic and a wide long stretch, so you could see it coming, the said.

Carly again

2010-12-05T20:52:00.007-05:00

Here is Carly again - no longer working at Goodbye Blue Monday - now devoting her life to her art - portrait painting. Photograph was taken at Goodbye Blue Monday on her nearly last day. The place is looking as inviting as ever and is soon to be serving twenty-seven varieties of toasted cheese sandwich. I suggested to Matthew, a GBM senior manager, a twenty-eighth. Welsh Rarebit, chedder cheese with the addition of Worcestershire sauce or mustard. There is an English colony in Bushwick, who I know are frequenters of GBM, so there will be takers.

Myrtle and Broadway

2010-12-05T15:48:00.010-05:00

We climbed the iron steps to the station of the elevated tracks of the J, M and Z line at Broadway and Myrtle Avenue. The couple disappeared through the brown swing doors into the subway entrance. I thought I had lost them in the free-for-all of shoppers returning home with their bags. But they were standing near the turnstile and had noticed Caroline with our dog Louis and I beckoned to them to come and meet him. They carried no bags. She was there to say goodbye to him. He was returning to Manhattan where he studies Criminal Justice at Berkeley College.

We had to wait for the sun to go behind the clouds. We pressed into a corner on the walkway by the entrance to the subway where the light would be good. Louis and Caroline greeted the shoppers as they banged through the swing doors. At last we felt we had found the center of Brooklyn, a place difficult to pinpoint.

At first she did not want to be photographed because she was wearing sweat pants (I explained it was just head and shoulders). After the shoot, he asked to be photographed by Caroline, with me and Louis.

Christmas tree salesman

2010-12-05T09:34:00.009-05:00

First day back in Brooklyn for several weeks. The day started badly. Lunching at the friendly and cosy Boulevard Café on Bushwick Avenue, a young woman sat writing in a notebook at the next door table. Yes, writing in a notebook. When she stared out of the window she looked good, lost in thought. But a fuse box stood out prominently behind her head and I could not get myself in the right place without her seeing what I was up to. I abandoned it and we moved on.

Caroline spotted a man selling Christmas trees from a stall on Broadway. He obligingly gave me his time. If you have a section of sidewalk the length of a sizable store front, full of Christmas trees on December 4th, a Saturday, you do not have much time to clear them.

Father and daughter

2010-12-01T21:10:00.013-05:00

Having shirked the trip to Brooklyn last weekend because of the shoppers, we went to sedate Rhinebeck, NY and Bread Alone. They serve cupcakes now - this organic paragan of multi-grain. We were sitting two tables down from a father, mother and their three daughters. 'There's a fourth child, our son, but he's away at school," the mother said.

"The likeness between your husband and your youngest daughter caught my eye."

"I am sure they would love to be photographed."

With their strong looks they could be cast in any film about pioneers. I can see them in a covered wagon galloping full tilt across the foothills of Wyoming in 1870 - bullets popping holes in the canvas.

William Styron

2010-11-25T11:38:00.009-05:00

This portrait of William Styron is included in a current show called "Recent Acquisitions" at the Smithsonian, National Portrait Gallery. It was taken at Mr. Styron's house in Roxbury, Connecticut, in 1984.

The photograph was first exhibited on Martha's Vineyard where Mr. Styron's friend Art Buchwald looked at the photograph and said to him, "I didn't know you were a homeless person, Bill."

Mr. Styron's house was dark and crowded with furniture and books so I asked if I could look around outside. The summer house immediately caught my eye and with some coaxing Mr Styron sat on the steps. I said that I thought he looked too scrunched up and suggested he lean back on one elbow. He did so and I was ready with my finger on the shutter release before he had time to think about smiling.

Ava and compost

2010-11-23T12:30:00.007-05:00

Ava's career as an organic farmer began eight years ago when she was eleven-years-old. She worked the till at a farmer's market stand in Cold Spring on Saturday mornings. Soon she was spending her summers on the farm and last year lived there in a trailer. Next year, she and another intern from the farm are starting their own organic farm in New Hampshire.

Ava with scythe

2010-11-22T21:53:00.006-05:00

A skill Ava developed on the farm was how to use and sharpen a scythe. She said she learnt a great deal from watching eighty-year-old English farmers demonstrating their skills with a scythe on YouTube. The two scythes she now owns came from her father (not a farmer) who had them in a shed.

Meditation can be dangerous

2010-11-11T16:18:00.006-05:00

Man turned to stone by staring at Central Hudson power lines. Sculpture by Emil Alzamora in his open air studio in Beacon, NY.

At Emil Alzamora's

2010-11-10T22:12:00.003-05:00

Caroline with her hands full at the Open Studio in Beacon.

Scene in the park

2010-11-10T13:01:00.002-05:00

Washington Square Park on a fine, late autumn afternoon. The couple in the foreground are gripped by the subject in hand, a serious subject, it looks like. Along side them is a young man miles away in his own thoughts. Behind them, we have a couple without much to say to each other at all. Next to them, a couple, limbs entwined, helpless with laughter, and then a man on his telephone who looks as though he is making no progress with anything. In the far background, two figures, sitting in a similar fashion, one in the sun and the other in the shade.