Beginnings

As a journalism student at Rhodes University in South Africa, I had the incredible opportunity to study photojournalism with the legendary TJ Lemon.  I told him I didn’t have a camera and he offered one of his old cameras.  It was a 35mm, with a broken light meter and a single 50mm cloudy lens, but neither of these limitations mattered.  I learned to read the light without relying on a meter; set off to document the protest marches; and ran to the darkroom to develop the negatives to see what I had captured.  I was very young, had already been followed and approached by the South African police and was frightened.  I couldn’t properly record or do photographic justice to the intensity of the emotion of the people suffering under the final years of Apartheid.  I found a second guide in Obie Oberholzer, an exceptional photographer who had just published his first book, a vibrant, honest, character-filled journey that I read over and over.

In San Francisco I found a darkroom space to rent in the basement of John Perino’s wonderful gallery space, “Focus Gallery”.  I printed there for years, even when I had access to the college darkroom.  By then I was fussy and didn’t want other students slopping their chemistry on my prints.  I was enrolled at the City College of San Francisco and loved every minute of it.  I rode my bike from McCann in downtown San Francisco out to the city college with 18x24 size photo paper strapped to my back.  I was determined!  I took every single class on offer, and Colour Printing three times for the fabulous constructive criticism provided by teacher, Jeff Weston. 

I started working as a photo assistant on commercial shoots around the Bay Area and gradually did less of that and more work for my own clients.  It was an incredible time of learning.