On October 8, 2011, a few of us from Yale Architecture School class of 1970 gathered, along with some other friends, at Dan Scully's place in Dublin, New Hampshire. A delightful place! See for yourselves!
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In 1968 or 1969 I rented a room at John and Lori Krantz' house. Roc Caivano also rented a room in that house, and John, Roc, and I were in the same class at Yale Architecture School. We gave a party and made an empty room into a portrait studio. These are some of the shots which include portraits of Charles Moore, our Dean one of the most talented American architects.
Please correct me if I have misidentified some people, and please help me identify those whose names I have forgotten. Thank you! Also, does someone have the exact date when this party took place? I will know when I find the negatives, but I am still digging.... I went to Senegal in late 2010 to visit my daughter Maya. She is in the Peace Corps and she teaches urban agriculture. We hired a car and traveled all over the country. We spent Christmas in Saint Louis. We went to Kolda where Maya is stationed. We were joined by our friends from San Diego, Steve and Jeannette, and we traveled together to Saloum Delta nature preserve where we spent New Year's. Walking among mangroves in Koeur Bamboung was a highlight of the trip!
Maya's terrific blog is here: http://mayaenroute.wordpress.com/ While in San Miguel a few of us took a side trip to Guanajuato, about an hour an a half away by car. A beautiful town, bigger than San Miguel, with more energy and much more vivid colors. We first went to the mirador (lookout), which offers a panoramic view of the town. A funicular takes you down to the center of town. We walked the streets, looked inside churches, had lunch. We went deep inside an old gold and silver mine, out of operation for many years but still impressive about the tough condtions inside. Street photos were probably the most successful part of this side trip, I think.
Spent a week in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, at the invitation of David and Honey Lippman. David and Honey bought a house there and invited their friends to come celebrate a housewarming, their anniversary, and their birthdays. My own birthday fell on one of the days we were there, so we celebrated mine as well!
About 24 people showed up, almost evenly divided between a contingent from the East Coast (where David and Honey reside) and one from the West Coast. There was also a small group of migueleños, i.e. American expatriates who live in San Miguel. I enjoyed seeing some old friends and meeting new ones. Among old friends were Josh Morton, Joe Cohen, Marie Consiglio, Debbie and Francis Morris. New friends were Carole Schulze, Mary Pat Akers and her daughter Natalie (a Yale freshman and, next year, a resident of Saybrook College where David Lippman, Jon Hankin, and I roomed together), Julianna Roosevelt and Mario Velasquez, Paula Panich and Bill Linsman, Naomi and Steve Somkin, Geoffrey Young, AG Rosen, Debi Sonzogni, David and Betsey McKearnan, Pamela Esler and Juan Lans, and Norman and Colleen Besman. Honey and David had a party that began in their zaguán (open air entry vestibule, in this case) with shots of tequila. It continued in the living room and specially in the interior patio where there was live music. Waiters served champagne and boquitas (appetizers). Dinner was served on the spacious terraza on top of the second story. I brought cascarones de carnaval (painted eggshells filled with confetti) to celebrate in a uniquely Mexican way, and after dinner we cracked them on each others' heads, laughing like children. I have redesigned the website for a better appearance and easier navigation. On the home page I added a What's New list of recently added images. You can click on each listing to go directly to the pictures.
Over the past week I have added.... (click on the highlighted words to go to pictures or websites): portraits of Salvador Torres, a pioneering Chicano muralist. He was one of the artists who painted the murals at Chicano Park in San Diego. I am involved in the preservation of another of his murals a few blocks away. It is a 400-foot mural painted on an old Kelco building at the base of the Coronado Bridge. My role is to photograph the demolition of the building and to document the damage (if any) to the mural walls. My friend Jeannette DeWyze wrote about this in her blog. portraits taken at an International Women's Day event organized by Women's Empowerment International (WE). My friend Leigh Finley, who is involved with WE, asked me to come to the event and take pictures. The challenge was working with the overhead fluorescent lighting (typical of an office) which is neither flattering for portraits nor daylight balanced (fluorescents are usually too green). travel pictures of China. In the fall of 2009 my daughter Erin and I traveled for three weeks throughout China. We started out in Shanghai, then Yellow Mountain, Xidi and Hongcun Villages, Suzhou, Xian, took a 4-day Yangtze River cruise, Guilin, Yangshuo, Guangzhou, Jiujiang (where we visited relatives), and Hong Kong. We had a guide and a chauffeur in every city. A fabulous trip! Erin continued on to Vietnam, Australia, and India. She drew and painted fabulous watercolors which you can see on her blog. pictures of homes, primarily interiors. Occasionally, I take pictures of homes for realtors. What better way to document the way we live? I did this back in the late 1970's as well. Someday I will scan those old negatives and juxtapose images of interiors taken about 35 years apart... I just added pictures of the interior of the Morris House, taken in Spring 2010, to which I referred in my previous post. It is obviously the home of a master violin/cello maker. The cat wandered into the picture-taking session and made himself the star! I will look in my archives and, hopefully, find the pictures I took of the same house 45 years ago and post them.
I was in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, last spring, helping my Yale roommate Jon hang his first photography show. It was a great success. Over 100 people came to the opening!
Jon lives next door to Debbie, sister of our other roommate David. I expressed an interest in going over to Debbie's house to take pictures because 45 years ago I had taken photos of the house and the land when it belonged to Debbie's and David's mother. Those images, taken in winter, were published in the Yale Literary Magazine. Debbie was very gracious and let me take pictures inside her house. Seeing the photographs of the interior of her house, Debbie asked me to photograph her daughter's Melisse's wedding. I am not a wedding photographer. I can count the number of weddings I have photographed with one hand. We agreed to photograph the wedding with the stipulation that I would do it my way, in a photojournalistic fashion rather than the formulaic wedding-photographer fashion. On the day of the wedding, October 2, 2010, I took over 600 pictures and they were well received. Don't worry, the slide show on my web site is a severely edited down version of the total! I am publishing my first website today, 10/10/10!! It must be an auspicious number as befits somebody of Chinese heritage. :) The header image was taken near Guilin, China, in October 2009.
I am starting this website with portraits taken of some of my Yale architecture school buddies on October 3, 2010. We gathered at Bob Shannon's A Stonewall Inn (otherwise known as Shannondu), near Windham, Vermont, and enjoyed Bob's and Steven's generous hospitality, including Steven's delicious cooking. I wanted to take portraits during this gathering because forty years ago, when we were all in architecture school, we had a party at John Krantz's house where I took portraits of everyone who came. And yes, I will post the old portraits as soon as I dig them out of storage and scan them. We had such a great time that we are already talking about getting together annually. Turner Brooks suggested we meet next year at Dan Scully's, "I suggest that next year we converge on the weirdly equivalent, but very different estate of Dan Scully just (approximately) across the river. There, also in a wooded landscape, instead of the beautiful meandering serpentine beds of flowers and nymphaeums , you will find is a single strip of asphalt terminating splendidly in a ceremonial Temple to a Dragster. There, in this solar heated room, we can all sit enthroned in the mighty gas guzzler, for one more solo photo op for Alberto." |
AuthorI have been a photographer since the age of 12. I have worked as a photographer, a writer, a teacher, an architect, a project manager of real estate developments, and a construction manager. I like photography best! Archives
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