I quit my carpentry job the week before we got married in 1976. My boss, a hard working Italian immigrant named Salvatore Caramana, couldn’t believe I would quit before getting married. “What are you gonna do?” he kept asking me. I didn’t know but I knew I didn’t want to work that hard for the rest of my life.
After our honeymoon I got my first graphic arts job. I was hired by the City of Rochester Police Department under a one year grant and worked on the fourth floor of the Public Safety building with the detectives in what was called the Crime Analysis Unit.
The grant covered any classes that were related to my work so I signed up for a couple of photo classes at the UofR. Bill Jenkins, who was curator of modern photography at the Eastman, taught the classes. I loved it. I had been an art major before dropping out and these classes got me back on the academic train. I eventually cobbled together a Fine Arts degree from SUNY Empire State.
I kept an envelope of prints from those days and determined I could improve them by editing, in this case by trimming the 8×10 prints into these square pieces. Click here to view the images in a slideshow format.
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