Fourteen people in the back of a Chevy pickup was the best ride we could land at the Iran/Afghanistan border. The ride was ameliorated by a rather spiffy paved road after the usual haggle over fare and a long ride to Herat, and by the driver sharing his bread and meat with us. Herat is […]

It was evening when we crossed from Turkey into Iran. There were no nearby towns, but we found a bus that would head for Tabriz the next morning and for about a dollar we secured passage and were allowed to sleep on the bus overnight. A chilly night here in the middle of October…and I’m […]

…waiting on the shore for our rescue boat, the Samsun, to take Nelson and I on up the Black Sea to the Turkish port of Trabzon and the continuation of our trip eastward. Our one day adventure as ‘shipwreck’ survivors was over and after a rather comical interlude of competing ships officers, local authorities, tug […]

…and why would two proto-hippies with backpacks and a $2 a day budget even try such a venture in the first place? We had been a week in Istanbul by that time and were now old hands at dealing with the chaos of the city. Bargaining in the bazaar meant we could argue down prices […]

With no sleeping bags and no village nearby to find a room for the night, Nelson and I were relieved to see the black sedan with Yugoslav plates stopped for us as night fell in a lonely Alpine valley in Austria. Remember, however, 1968 was the height of the Cold War. Russia had invaded Prague […]

Half A Century Ago, cont. As we headed across Europe, October found Nelson and I in Münich around the time of Oktoberfest. Now, I was not much of a beer drinker, coming from the U.S. in the 60s-the land of Budweiser, et al. But hey, we can walk around the fair grounds eat wurst. I’d […]

  On September 15, 1968, my friend Nelson Todd and I flew to London and began a three month journey by plane, bus, boat, train. Where those weren’t abailable we stuck out our thumbs. That was the beginning of 18 months of travel over a five year period that changed my life. In a time […]

I was invited today to the Spring Show of the Art Academy of San Francisco Photo Department, to participate as one of the photography judges. Although I am used to running my own gallery, which presumes a certain experience with judging another artist’s work-I don’t hang it on the walls unless I like it-that’s not […]

Ugly little thing, isn’t it? The yellow stain on this print is the classic sign of acid contamination of a print on Hahnemühle Bamboo paper, one of my current favorites. But what caused it? the client called and said a print done barely a year before had turned yellowish even though she used an acid-free […]

A recent “Call For Entries” generated 70 responses overnight. One applicant was H. N. I knew she was Iranian, but I assumed she lived either here in the states, or in Canada. In any case, I knew she wasn’t a local photographer and so even though I liked her work, I replied that the gallery […]