Portrait of a Dance - 1

One of the series I'm working on is a portrait series of senior men and women.  Since I'm getting older myself, I've been interested in the aging process, and I have fallen in love with the mature face and the stories that form them.

I met Rudy recently, and he's a very interesting man.  He has spent his life in dance and performance art, and he invited me to come to a dance studio in Santa Monica where he is choreographing and rehearsing a performance piece along with a small company of dancers.  I first went to photograph him, but I was drawn to watching the rehearsal going on, and the movement was hypnotizing.  I started to shoot the rehearsal, and I'm going to go back over the next couple months to document more of the process of bringing this piece to performance.

Donald, 82.  An LGBT senior who doesn't look anywhere near his age.

Jack, 67, part of my LGBT senior subjects.

John, 75.

Rudolfo.

Beverley, 50+.

Alternative tintype.

Lea. 



I've been working through the issues of creating tintype images here at home without the benefit of working in a regular darkroom.  I think I'm getting closer to making this technique work.  At the same time I'm working on putting the tintype technique with the right photographic project.

The process I'm currently using is not the original wet-plate method of creating tintypes.  I'm using an alternative emulsion, AG-Plus and creating contact prints from digital images.  However, I'm working out a way to be able to shoot the tins in-camera and create one-of-a-kind photographs.  And ultimately my goal is to learn the wet-plate technique.

My tintype process is a very time-consuming process getting the tins ready to hold the special emulsion, coating the tins with the emulsion,  letting them dry sufficiently to be usable, and then going through the printing process.  Because of that, final images will be slower in coming than being able to turn photographs out in the current digital age.  But I love this medium so much, I don't mind working slowly and methodically to achieve the results I'm looking for.

Lee, 74.

I have to talk a little about this man as Lee is one of the most interesting gay people I've ever come across. 

I met Lee over 30 years ago; he was a friend of my partner, Joe.  Joe had met him in the late '60s at The Patch, one of the first gay bars in the South Bay area.  This was at a time when men could be arrested just for dancing with each other, and the local cops made frequent stops in the bar looking for any and all violations. 

Lee is one of those bigger-than-life characters who's been afraid of nothing during his lifetime.  He was, and is, a painter, a muralist, an interior designer, an actor/performer, an activist among others.    Joe and I had lost contact with Lee over a decade ago; and when I managed to re-locate him again just recently, he'd lost little of his bravado and charm even though he's been confined to a wheelchair for many years.

Back in the '60s Lee was very active in the civil rights movement, and spent much time in the South helping in any way he could.  During one of his visits to Selma, Alabama, the small group of people he was traveling with was jumped by the locals for being fags, and Lee was beaten severely; one of his friends was murdered right there on the street.  Lee was also at the forefront of the early Gay Liberation movement in the '60s and 70's, and we wouldn't be where we are without people like him.  A documentary about his life is in the works.

I'm going to be working with Lee more in order to try to capture his huge personality, as I feel there is so much I can do with Lee, but I'm so excited to have found him once more and get him back in our lives.