CURRENT MISSION

To promote my new book and spread my original approach "beyond landscape photography." To see and photograph as much of the planet as possible. To understand the earth's struggles and fight for the prosperity of the real people everywhere and against oppression and greed.

ABOUT ME

I'm a very fit, healthy, agile 78 years old, very involved in national and world politics and try to make statements through my photographic art. I've been around the world (2014) and recently spent 3 weeks in China seeking geological wonders. My curiosity is extensive and relentless. I read around 24-30 books/year: novels, biographies, history, and social sciences. I try to understand how power really works and get behind the news.
I have two wonderful grown daughters and three grandchildren.

PHILOSOPHY

My life is full of personal joy—of learning, creating, exploring and being with my friends. But I grieve the tremendous injustices in the world today. I try to stay informed and participate in non-violent actions to raise consciousness and ultimately change our unhealthy, out of balance system in the US, while lending support to liberation movements around the world, especially the Palestinians. I believe it is up to each individual to stay informed about health, since our commercial system tries to sell very dangerous products over the long term.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING

I love to meet new people who share a similar openness to difference and curiosity about the struggles for freedom and justice going on right now in the world. I love to meet other artists and to share my art with anyone with a curious eye.

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

I have couch surfed extensively in France, Italy, and the US, and I have made good, enduring friends that way. I have been doing this all my life, long before I joined CSI, and have from time to time hosted people sent to me by friends and stayed with friends of friends myself in Europe. It's almost always been an expansive experience.

Interests

Photography and graphic art in general. Literature, history, theater, dance, music (I'm also a jazz pianist). Nature, pre-history, geology, wildlife, the environment, politics, psychology, philosophy.
I've just published a book, "Faces in the Rocks: Psycho-Geological Photography," that is the result mostly of the last 10 years of my work. It's about letting your unconscious "caress" the "chaos" of rock and ice formations to capture and edit strong abstract and figurative compositions.

• arts
• books
• literature
• theater
• photography
• environment
• politics
• movies
• traveling
• music
• jazz
• piano
• communications
• geology
• history
• languages
• psychology

Music, Movies, and Books

Fellini, French cinema, documentaries. I don't get to enough movies. I read mostly history and politics, but my degree is in literature, so I love Flaubert, Joyce, Proust, Mann, Musil, George Eliot, Kafka, Rilke, Faulkner, Rushdie, Nabokov, Moravia, Mark Twain...the list goes on. I'm a jazz player and fan, but also enjoy new age and folk, especially political folk. I'm very at home in the world of classical music.

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

I've created a multi-media encyclopedic CD-ROM on the history of jazz piano with Dick Hyman, sold worldwide (1999). I've curated a show of 125 photographers using unconventional methods (2007). I've self-published a number of photo books. I've traveled to Newfoundland, Minganie, Wales, Mono Lake and Glacier National Park, and around the world (12 countries in 10 weeks) in 2014. I've photographed 14,000-year-old sculptures in France (2006). I've created a body of work that had a 5-month show at the Musée de l'érotisme de Paris 2008-09.

Teach, Learn, Share

The visual, the invisible, pre-history, psychodynamics, politics, nutrition, travel, ironies, stories.

What I Can Share with Hosts

Curiosity, languages, images, perspectives on the USA and the world, discoveries, insights, recommendations of books, movies; music, travel experiences.

Countries I’ve Visited

Cambodia, China, Costa Rica, France, Germany, Iceland, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Kenya, Madagascar, Mongolia, Nepal, Turkey, United Kingdom, Viet Nam

Countries I’ve Lived In

France, Germany, Italy, United States

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