In 1965, not long after my arrival in New York, I began in my free time to photograph a number of painters, sculptors and illustrators then living in, or within commuting distance of, the city. Amongst them were such familiar names as deKooning, Dine, Duchamp, Lichtenstein, Oldenburg, Rauschenberg, Rosenquist, Rothko, Segal, Steinberg, Warhol and Wesselman. I don’t recollect whom I met first but a visit to one artist’s studio invariably led me to the studio of another. Regardless of my inexperience then as a photographer I was always warmly received and politely thanked for the portraits I mailed back to them.

Warhol was the exception. He appropriated my photograph of him to create a series of silk-screen self-portraits of himself, which at auction today attract seven or eight-figure bids. Unfortunately since I had failed to file for copyright to my image as required under the law in those days I received neither credit nor fee.

Commencing in the late 1970s I was commissioned by Omni, a now defunct science and science-fiction magazine, to take portraits of various notable figures in that field, such as the Nobel prize-winning physicist, Richard Feynman, and the author, Arthur C. Clarke.  

Most of these individuals are no longer alive. I feel privileged to have met them and hope that my portraits, taken almost sixty-years ago, prove to have some documentary value.