I.  THE URBAN AND SUBURBAN LANDSCAPE

My interest in the Urban and Suburban Landscape dates back to 1980, when I was winding up my career as a corporate executive in Minneapolis. I had the good fortune to study for three intensive months with George Gambsky at the Art Center of Minnesota, an idyllic place situated in a hundred-year-old schoolhouse on the banks of Lake Minnetonka.  A difficult and embittered man, this 1950s protégé of Minor White labored unhappily for decades as a staff photographer at the University of Wisconsin before coming to Minneapolis, where he taught only a few years before terminally antagonizing the Pillsburys, Crosbys and other well-heeled patrons of the Art Center. A "fine print" fanatic, Gambsky drilled me unmercifully in the control and manipulation of photographic materials and in the construction of the purposeful photo essay, as contrasted with my former pattern of random picture-taking with no particular outcome in mind. 

The product of my directed study with him was a set of 10 prints made in my immediate neighborhood, “Suburbia: a Fable for Our Times.”  It hung for a time in a local real estate brokerage as part of a student show; my satirical treatment of the subject raised more than a few eyebrows and stirred some controversy, and I realized I could create photographs capable of reaching viewers on a deep, provocative and possibly even threatening emotional level. This was an exciting first for me and, in hindsight, the experience set the stage for much more to come.  "Suburbia" was the centerpiece of my first public gallery show in 1983 at the long-defunct Subway Gallery in Bisbee, a fiasco in which I hung almost every photograph I had ever matted in order to fill the wall space - a common rookie mistake, as I later learned.  Gambsky visited Tucson in 1985 and urged me to replicate the Minneapolis theme here in the desert; the result was “Urban Development and the Natural (Re)Order,” which poked at the peculiar uses, misuses and abuses of desert vegetation in Tucson's suburban environment. 

A different "take" on urban life, “Familiar Places” (1995-96) was done in Tucson and explores the personally disorienting effects of experiencing places normally teeming with people, traffic and activity - but photographed at times when they are absolutely devoid of human presence.  One art reviewer saw many of these photos as a critique of Tucson's architectural failures and pedestrian unfriendliness – not my underlying intent, yet certainly a plausible enough interpretation. The 34-piece group was exhibited at the Tucson Museum of Art in late 1997 and is now owned by TMA.  The event was something of a personal milestone - my 100th solo showing. 

The other, more recent projects in the Urban/Suburban group appear in my current medium, digital color.  “First Light in the Hood” (2004-05) is a gentler, more subtle treatment of the suburban environment as compared with the more acerbic gelatin silver predecessors mentioned above, the photos typically employing bright, yet thin and mysterious early morning desert light.  “Postcards from the Strip” (2005) seeks to convey the sheer exuberance, absurdity, irony and faux elegance pulsing through several blocks of Las Vegas glitter, images of one-of-a-kind urban kitsch.

2. II. IMPERMANENCE AND MORTALITY
   

Another major grouping of projects confronts in various visual ways the difficult but universal themes of Impermanence and Mortality.  The images portray places that have passed from vitality and importance to decay and disuse, and in my more recent work, plant and vegetable matter in various stages of disintegration.  My interest here is not in dwelling on the morbid and the melancholy, but in provoking inquiry into the nature of life and the meaning of time and its inevitable passage – for all things, sentient and inanimate, tissue and stone. 

This work has taken me along old Route 66, once the busiest highway in the country; “Bypassed Places: Route 66” (1985-86) graphically portrays the economic and human depression which set in when Interstate 40 was completed in 1979 between Kingman and Seligman, AZ, completely bypassing the "Mother Road" of story and song.  Many of the authentic relics, decrepit old buildings, original signs and rusted auto hulks are now gone, having been purged for a new wave of tourism triggered when Route 66 was cleaned up and declared a National Historic Roadway in the '90s.  (As the saying goes, "nostalgia ain't what it used to be.") 

In a similar vein, I later researched and traveled 40 counties in the 10 Great Plains states, concentrating on areas where repeated boom-bust cycles, drought, depletion of natural resources and farming/ranching failures had created an immense, blighted, largely abandoned swath of the United States comparable to frontier times in its dearth of population.  “Great Plains: the Vast, the Diminished Land” (1992) is a 50-piece photo essay that resulted from 13 days of non-stop driving, photographing, sleeping and occasionally parking the battered old camper to take some nourishment.  I'll never forget the incessant broadside winds, the vast, featureless landscapes, driving for hours on end with no sign of another automobile or human being, and my considerable relief when towns offering signs of life would come into view. The region and its tortured history were certainly new to my experience and in their way quite alien to me. However, nothing could prepare me for the grim experience of making pictures in the former ghettos, Gestapo prisons and death camps of Eastern Europe.  “Places of Ha'Shoah (Holocaust)” (1994) consists of heavily bordered single and multiple images, deliberately stark and suggestive of the incomprehensible evil perpetrated in these places.  A permanent exhibit of these pictures is displayed in the U.S. Air Force Museum at Wright-Patterson AFB, Dayton, OH; Tucson's Center for Creative Photography has many of the prints in its collection.

A very different visual perspective on the mortality theme is depicted in “Fallen Sentinels” (1999/2007), photographs of once-majestic saguaro, still erect but either dead or in the late stages of their prolonged existence.  Original gelatin silver prints were scanned and printed digitally first in 2002 with an olive-sepia tone, then reprinted  in 2007 in a deeper, more neutral color.  Thematically, the “Vanitas” (2004-07) group of digital color still life images also confronts the transient nature of life, but like "Sentinels," in a manner very different from my earlier social documentary viewpoint. The still life is a totally new approach to photography for me, one which started as a simple test of a new digital camera and rapidly evolved into a body of new, unaccustomed and especially challenging work, a far cry from my decades of indifference to this form of expression.  As with the "Sentinels," there is a certain attraction-repulsion aspect to the work, heightened by the depth and saturation of the colors employed.

III.  PHOTOESSAY SERIES, “IN SHADOWS ANCIENT”

Throughout known history people have had a need to establish their presence and alter the face of their territory with monuments ... places of worship, ceremony, play, life, death, and everlasting honor. Many such places are overpowering in their physical scale and architectural magnificence. Beyond these physical realities, they possess their own mystique, a patina of history and mythology that both informs and offers mystery and wonderment about the lives that passed in these places.

"In Shadows Ancient" (1983-89) is an umbrella title for six separate photo essays, two done in southern Mexico and Guatemala, the others in Rome, Egypt, Israel and Greece/Turkey.  Each project consists of about 40 photographs - formal, unpopulated images of ancient monumental places, and street photographs of all varieties: humor, religious observance, youth, aging, irony, playfulness, sadness…depicting people pursuing the ordinary business of living and the commonality of the human condition.  In short, people playing out their existence amidst the remnants of the ancient civilizations that preceded them.  These projects satisfied two important objectives – my fascination with ancient civilizations and their archeological sites, and my desire to more sharply observe the drama and humor of the streets and photographically preserve slices of contemporary life in those overpowering historic settings. 

While meeting these needs handily, my adventures also got me threatened with jail by a zealous government security operative in Istanbul, confronted by the wrong end of an Uzi in the Upper Galilee, chased by a ranting, babbling woman in Panajachel, Guatemala, while her neighbors laughed at what must have been a regular spectacle, and berated by a Parisian prostitute who preferred anonymity to my gratuitous offer of photographic immortality.  Needless to say, while unexpected and not part of my plan these little incidents added considerable richness and learning to the experience of making pictures.

The specific projects comprising "In Shadows Ancient" are:

"Images of Israel" (1983) and "Israel, the Second Journey" (1987)

"Egypt, Beyond Time" (1987)

"Rome, the Eternal" (1987)

"Maya, of Earth, the Heavens, the Gods" (1987)

"The Grandeur of Ancient Greece" (1989)

"Oaxaca…Dias de los Muertos, Dias de los Vivos" (1989)

4. IV. WAITING: THE IMAGERY OF ISOLATION
   

     THE SITUATIONAL PORTRAIT

This group of situational portraits is from a collection of 60 photographs entitled “Waiting: the Imagery of Isolation,” made in 14 countries between 1978 and 1994.  Sometime back in the dim recesses of the mid-'80s, I was asked by some exhibit visitors why I didn't take photographs of people, since my public showings up to that point were almost exclusively of inanimate subjects.  I went back and reviewed seven or eight years of proof sheets and realized that I actually had made quite a few images of humans, some in the United States and many on a lengthy photography trip through Israel and much of western Europe.  None was posed, all were spontaneous, and almost all depicted their subjects as isolated, even in a crowd, deep in thought, or otherwise preoccupied with their interior lives and oblivious to their surroundings.  Sensing that these photos might comprise a body of work I began printing from existing negatives, later adding many more photographs to the group over the years.

Some psychologically informed viewers of this work have suggested that, for them, the pictures express the Gestaltist notion of humankind's inevitable and immutable aloneness, since they depict people across many different cultures engaging in their solitary pursuits quite removed from their fellow human beings.  And others have reported experiencing an urge to travel, apparently paying attention to exotic backgrounds and place names rather than to the subjects and themes I considered central to the photographs.  I've never been quite sure whether the point was simply missed, or if simple avoidance of an unpleasant subject was more the case.  I've also never asked, much preferring to leave viewer reactions to the viewers themselves.

5. V. NOTES ON THE REMAINING IMAGES
   

NOTE:  The following commentary touches lightly on a sampling of images, recent as of late 2007, that were included in the Retrospective.  They are from the China, “Mishigoss” and abstraction groups; the latter two have since been greatly expanded, and may be accessed in PORTFOLIOS II.

The first pair, from a collection of 100 prints, are fleeting impressions of a vast land made late in 2005 while on a nine-city tour through China. The group is entitled “Remembering China.”  It was my first and only guided travel experience ever, and the limitations on serious photographic adventure quickly became apparent.  Nevertheless, amidst the hundreds of obligatory record shots I was able to periodically separate from the herd and capture some interesting aspects of life on the streets and on the Yangtze River, a group of candid environmental portraits, elements of the countryside and some abstract compositions. If only more free time had been built in to the regimen…

The second pair of images is from an ongoing group of  quirky, spontaneous street pictures provisionally entitled “Mishigoss” (Craziness), and represents a return to my earlier infatuation with the ironic and often bizarre happenings that are a part of "normal" existence.  I propose to continue building this group in digital color.  (Note: as of January, 2011, almost 300 images comprised this group.)

Lastly, there are several photographs from a group of abstractions which, for me, represent uncharted waters and a new way of visualizing.  I proceed slowly and with caution appropriate for a new learner, and with the benefit of informed guidance and critique.  The process is quite removed from my more accustomed mode of documenting the reality that swirls around me, posing a very different and welcome photographic challenge.  (Almost 150 semi-abstract, abstract and non-objective photographs may be accessed in portfolios CC and EE, PORTFOLIOS II.)

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NOTE:  The link below is to a short video of an “Arizona Illustrated” interview exploring the photography of Cy Lehrer.  It appeared on KUAT-TV, Tucson’s public television affiliate, September 4, 2007, at the start of  his Retrospective exhibit.