A Selection of Portraits, vol 2

It's what I do...

Most of my life, I’ve been making portrait photographs for various magazines, and advertising clients. I’ve also done this for clients who want images of their kids, of themselves, and their wives and families. Many are and were, friends; but also people who have made a positive difference in this life, and who have achieved fame beyond the norm.

I plan to continue shooting for as long as I can, and add these images to a considerable collection now being archived at UMASS Amherst.

Herein are several of my personal favorites, whom you might meet later on, elsewhere in the Substack I have only just begun—some with a bit of their story, but mostly because, well, I just like them.

This picture will, I’m sure, be featured in a forthcoming “stack,” but I am including it here as a way to brighten the gloomy mood that’s been haunting me since the Nov 5 election:

It was made in Togolese fishing village near Lome in the Spring of 1963, I was taking a break from a Peace Corps assignment there. The country was under martial law at the time. This cute didn’t

Next is a snap of Charles Crozier, a great friend who passed away several year ago.

Charles was a fine artist, and one of the most popular members of the Cape Cod art community, no question. Everyone liked Charly. We went to scores of movies together, and had many laughs. This photograph,heavily cropped, was made among a roomful of people at an opening party somewhere; but I really liked the light on him at that moment.

The cast of the movie “Three,” directed by James Salter in 1968. The lovely Charlotte Rampling, flanked by Robbie Porter on the right and Sam Waterston on the left. Sam is looking at his girlfriend at that moment, but this was the image used to promote the film. I had just come away from working on another film, “If It’s Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium,” and was really getting into it. They offered me a job as cameraman at that time, and I might have accepted the job, but I declined. One of the forks in the road that may have been a mistake.

My great friend Craig Vetter, a terrific journalist, on the cover of his novel-”Striking it Rich,” which chronicled his escapist time as an oil worker. Most of the time, however, Craig was writing short stories for Playboy magazine. His “Against the Wind” essays were a great hit for the magazine for many years, and he did a fair share of the interviews as well—notably Hunter S. Thompson, which was later made into a book. Life just shined out of the man, as did music. We did several stories together, but never enough.

Jerry Rubin, dressed up like an Indian for some politcal anti-war scheme I covered in the 60’s. Jerry was founder of the Youth International Party (or the Yippees), along with social and political activist Abbie Hoffman, who will appear someday in these stacks. LIFE ran this one full page, and getting the bookcover was pretty hot, but when I sent the original slide to a poster company, it never came back.

A portrait made of Michael and his Family at a Vinegrass concert in Wellfleet. One shot, on the fly. Michael is the owner of the Harvest Wine Bar, and an artist in his own right. This snap was made in 2005. With a family like his, one can’t miss!

The lovely Vickery Sisters, in my Birmingham studio, sometime in the 1980’s. Substack allows its users (like me) to publish stuff that would ordinarily be forgotten.

The black sweaters was my idea.

And below: maybe my last political snap, perhaps taken as I was leaving Washington DC in 1969. What was happening here? Who is this guy? Is he running for dogcatcher somewhere in Texas? To pay the rent, I spent a lot of time doing shots like this.

Just not so much anymore.