Arroyo No1 (Artist's Proof Edition) Photograph

Above all, I am a storyteller. My medium is the camera, and my dialogue fills the space between reason and the unconscious. I have been an image-maker for over 25 years. I hail from Budapest, Hungary, the birthplace of my photographic heritage in the form of such influencers as Moholy-Nagy, Kertesz, Munkacsi and Frank Capa (who incidentally said: "It is not enough to be a talented photographer, you also have to be Hungarian." By which he meant Hungarian-Jewish.) As an Atheist-Jew turned Theologian turned Spiritual-Gangster, I have always sought the light. It first struck me through the viewfinder of my Russian medium-format camera. I was only 10. Since I can remember I have always interpreted the world through images. They gave me, a childhood dyslexic, a way to engage in meaningful discourse that otherwise might have been denied me. My work is reactive. Profound experience is my trigger. It resonates and is assimilated into the instinctive/emotional/intellectual self. This is where my stories are born. They are seldom linear or narrative, but are always personal, often contemplative, and unequivocally rooted in the collective unconscious. My current collections are such a discourse. It discusses the myriad ways in which the stimuli of my environment in perplexing Southern California affect my instinctual self. In four projects, I am engaging three unique, but related, formal qualities of my medium. Take the mythical vortex that is Joshua Tree, or the concrete pandemonium of Los Angeles. The terrestrial gateway to the “other side” versus the estuary of the terminally unique. Both a cause for a pause.