About

I am a psychiatrist in my other life. In that life, when I meet a new patient in my office, my first goal is to connect. It is easy with some: we just click and the patient opens up. Others remain cautious and closed off for months, while some don’t even know what connecting is. In these latter instances I must break barriers, sometimes gently and sometimes quite forcefully. Doing so is not too comfortable either for me or for the patient, but it is something that must be done. Otherwise, I will not be able to accomplish my second goal, which is to understand and accept my patients for who they are rather than who they may want to appear to be. What I encounter most is pain, but also beauty. Seeing beauty helps me heal the pain - which is my third and final goal.

When I photograph strangers, I echo as a street photographer what I do as a psychiatrist. My first aim, as always, is to connect. While connecting and breaking barriers in my office may take weeks, both can be accomplished in a split second in the street. Complementing my work as a psychiatrist, my second goal as a photographer is to capture an image of a person as they really are rather than who they may want to appear to be. Since people’s souls shine through their eyes, when taking the photograph I try to make eye contact. If this is not possible for some reason, I focus on gestures and clothes. Fortunately, some gestures and outfits can be as expressive and revealing as people’s eyes.

My final goal in photography is to preserve human beauty in all its non-trivial forms. David Byrne once said “It is the pain that keeps us alive but that beauty is all that we need to survive.” I hope that the beauty in my images helps the survival part – the viewer’s, the subject’s, and mine.