This site is currently a place holder, no regular updates. I moved daily operations to blogspot. There I have semi-regular posts on a variety of subjects. Recipes:

I also post pictures of the old post cards I tend to pick up at various flea markets and paper shows. There is an Antique Paper Show in the Glendale Civic Auditorium about every 4 months. The Pasadena Flea Market is also a good place to look for them. It's held on the first Sunday of every month at the parking lot of the Pasadena City College.

Some I pick simply because they are visually attractive, like this one from 1924. The water color image and the cursive message elevates it to the level of a one of a kind art print, in my opinion.

Other cards are more baffling. When I first saw these ones I thought they were showing WW II ruins, and couldn't figure out why. Eventually I realized they were from the First World War, and apparently served a role that nowadays the 24 hour news media fills. I since then found more of them, but not one yet that had been actually mailed.

However my main interest in collecting is old photographs - "vernacular photography" as some like to call it.

I have a strong affinity for polaroids, especially the color ones, form the 1950's, 60's, early 70's. They have a quite cohesive style, thanks to both influence of their era, and the technical aspects of their making. The colors fade and change in their very own way.

It's and odd thing how we tend to cling to our photos, but when somebody dies and there is nobody left to remember the people in their photo albums, they just get chucked away. At the last event I went to, one vendor had a suitcase full of photos, left behind an old lady apparently, many of them meticulously labeled with type written stickers. Are we, the collectors of these relics rescuers or vultures? It seems that there is always a hint of something predatory with almost anything involving photographs.

I've been trying to put it into words for myself what attracts me to family photos of strangers. There are many layers to it. To begin with, not all photos pique my interest. Out of hundreds of them there is maybe a dozen I pick. I like imperfections, bad compositions, telephone poles growing out of people's heads, heads cropped off, odd compositions, etc. Some of these images are simply transcendent. The B&W polaroid on the top right corner of this page is my best find of all times: A woman in loud blouse leaning into the frame and nudging a child who is looking out of the frame, while two people in the background are conversing with shrubbery. I like to think of it as a picture of Frederico Fellini's childhood album. I know, wrong time period. How about the fictional childhood of the fictional character, Alvy Singer from Woody Allen's Stardust Memories? I always thought of that movie as Woody doing a Fellini impersonation.

 

 

A few years ago I started photographing in the San Fernando Valley, aka "The Valley." This evolved into an urban landscape project. Some of the better ones can be viewed on Valley Photo.

I live in The Valley, and was first inspired to by the subtle little changes I started noticing in the North Hollywood area after the Metro Red line was opened. Gentrification started creeping in the neighborhood, with all its mixed baggage.

Since then I've been roaming further and further out, all the way to Sun Valley. These light industrial spaces have a unique patina, that most traveling through would probably dismiss as grime. I find them seductive.

I am inspired by the work of Eugene Atget, not that I have the audacity to compare my work to his, but I feel kindred.

My earliest impression of photography as an art form was through a tiny book of Andre Kertesz. French photographers of that era - Kertesz, Brassai, Henri Cartier Bresson, and Atget, of course - are still among my favorites. It is not because of nostalgia factor either. When they were photographing the streets of Paris, it was not with sentimentality. A hundred year from now a viewer might perhaps look at the picture of a rusty gate in Sun Valley with nostalgia - if he so choses.

 

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A good number of years ago I took a trip back to Hungary. A few pictures from the trip can be seen here.

I know it's a shame, but I only had a dinky little digital point-and-shoot camera at the time. It was a chubby thing with a cheep looking plastic body, and it cost too much. However my Pentax film camera broke at the end of my trip to Death Valley, and I never got around getting it fixed. I still have it and it's still broken. These days I carry around either my Nikon D300 or D50 - both digital.

I used to develop my own film - even color - print my own prints, and I don't particularly miss breathing the heavy chemical fumes. Digital photography works well for me, especially as resolutions are getting higher and cameras cheaper. It's also very practical when you don't have access to a darkroom any more. Moreover, I like the fact that once you have your equipment, a couple memory sticks, there are no ongoing expenses, no film to buy, prints to pay for.