As I was growing up, my father (an avid amateur photographer) had a vast collection of books at home. One of his many books happened to be Elliott Erwitt’s “Photographs and Anti-Photographs”. Although I hadn’t started taking pictures to any extent myself at that point, I kept returning to that book again and again. Erwitt’s black & white documentary and street photography images were absurd, quirky, and humorous. They struck a chord with me. They were also making a lasting impression, although I was unaware of that at the time.
Several years later I started using a camera myself, in earnest, studying photography in college. With exposure to the work of Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Doisneau, Robert Frank, Lee Friedlander, Josef Koudelka, Tod Papageorge, Garry Winogrand, I further realized my affinity and passion for the genre of street photography. The seed that had been planted in my youth, had flourished.
The odd juxtaposition, the coalescence of random elements, the ironic, have become fixtures in my sensibilities as a photographer. I’m grateful to all influences responsible for that, but especially to my dad (and Elliott Erwitt).
