In the fall of 1979, I quit my job as a graphic designer to pursue photography. My day job was hanging drywall and assisting a carpenter in Alexandria, Virginia. The plan was to develop my photo skills and portfolio and apply to graduate school in photography for the following year. I had a few photo projects to keep me busy, but I was naïve and lacked a lot of necessary training. Never the less, I felt optimistic about the future possibilities. A friend from my former job called me up one day to talk about a project at his new place of employment, the Marriott Corporation. He had seen my work and thought I might like to work with him with my work providing the décor for a rooftop lounge of the soon to be renovated Key Bridge Marriot Hotel. He introduced me to his boss, they liked my work and they hired me. I was to make black and white photographs, hand paint some of the images and they would be the art for this new space. The mandate was to make images of Washington DC that were evocative and timeless. The images needed to appeal to a local audience, but not be too esoteric as to lose the interest of an audience unfamiliar with the local landscape. I had six weeks to complete the project. It was February. It was cold and gray, and the light was dismal. For the first three weeks I floundered. In my attempts to visually define the city, I avoided the obvious, the monuments and the major buildings that are the very definition of our nation’s capital. Believing they were overdone; I sought a different direction. It wasn’t working. So, on a cold, wet, Saturday morning I went to the Mall and faced the marble structures head on. Working with infrared film and with very few people out and about, I photographed the monuments, one by one, trying hard to avoid the post card look. It was on that morning I created some of the best work of my career. Probably because of my naivety. I was trying to make pictures I had never seen before. And broke rules I didn’t even know existed. The project was a success, both artfully and commercially and began my lifelong interest in exploring the man-made landscape. I returned to DC often for a while and added new imagery to the series. The passing of film more or less ended that journey. But the lessons learned are with me still.
