God's Land (Istanbul) Photograph

On my 13th birthday, I took my savings and birthday gifts and bought a used 35 mm film camera. My camera gave me a voice that I had never had before and transformed me into a story-teller. It became my constant companion at school and play and later, at work, in a fascinating world of blast furnaces, coke ovens, and auto assembly plants. Often taking pictures clandestinely, I brought home amazing views of expansive factory assembly lines and red hot steel slabs roaring down conveyors to share with friends. In my early twenties, I caught the travel bug and ventured beyond home in Louisville, Kentucky where I drove a cab and later worked as a mechanic at the General Electric assembly plant to Cuba, Mexico, and Nicaragua. As resources allowed, I expanded my travels to South and Northern Africa, Eastern Europe, Russia, Europe, and Asia concentrating my aim on the views of the old country nearly left behind by the rapid onslaught of development. After moving to Boston in 1989, I fell in love with the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of the city. I became active in the Jamaica Plain Historical Society and managed their web site and their collection of historic photographs and provided photographic illustration for a series of nine books that serve to document the history of Boston's neighborhoods.