I used to be a photographer--a real one, one who had three Nikons around his neck--all containing real film--and each with a different focal length lens on it. I shot a lot of film, and developed and printed it too. I have boxes full right now, stored in our attic where--this winter for sure!--I'll sort them out, scan the best and Photoshop them for eternity.
Back when I was beginning, in the Fifties and Sixties, my heroes were the Great Ones: guys named W. Eugene Smith, Bruce Davidson, Eisenstadt, etc.
These guys lived with 35mm cameras, and they shot Real Life without filters. I emulated them and discovered that I too was a good photojournalist.
But by that time, there seemed to be no demand for real photojournalism, that which could capture and depict real life.
My first boss in NYC, Bobbie Ashley, at This Week Magazine, for instance. She lectured me about being a photographer, because to her photographers were small guys named Marty who tried to get sneaky shots of celebrities--the guys who later became papparazzi. Bobbie was a sweetheart but she seemed to have no room in her life for my kind of photography. Neither did anyone else, as I discovered.
I made the baby-spy photo above in about 1964, soon after my oldest daughter, Deborah, was born in Brooklyn.
