Portrait of a Photographer was done in 1981.  I was using the top floor of HIggens Hall designated as the senior painting studio at Pratt Institute.  I used to draw and paint my friends all the time.  I was just beginning to find my way as a contemporary painter.

    Lee Friedman was a year younger than myself and photo student at the time.  From my early training, most of my work was still rooted in realism and drawing from life.  Lee came to sit for a portrait one afternoon and I don’t know what happened.  I began ripping black paper and pasting it to the large scale paper I was painting on at the time.  Then I began to paint and draw into it.   I had never done any work that looked like that before. 

     Unconsciously there was something explosive I detected or needed to convey, though Lee on the surface was quite mild mannered and even a bit shy.   Maybe It was about the essence of photography, mostly black and white then for serious art photography. 

     If one looks closer, as an after thought to my impulse, I felt an obligatory obligation to realism to draw Lee back into the work so there are two small sketches within the work.      It was quite funny when Lee got up from his seat to come and see what I had done.