I chose this as a title for my upcoming solo show @TAG over “More Love Songs” for a couple of reasons. Critic Shana Nys summarized part of my show last year in the Lazarus Gallery saying, “Every generation must write love songs.” I took it as a left-handed compliment – my romanticized entrants into a crowded field. I thought of my pieces of as examples in my search for beauty. Beauty and romance are intertwined as are romance and love. I have a room in Cádiz and in Santa Monica that is for family-photo love songs. The rest of our apartment walls in Spain are adorned with visual love songs from my point of view. A small subset of those images was featured in my Lazarus Gallery show @TAG in May of 2025. For my first major solo show opening September 12, 2026, in the large North Gallery @TAG I chose to upscale my works, which are usually sized for home walls and home viewing, to command the space on large gallery walls. Since I am my own printmaker and deeply enjoy the challenge of archival printing, I accept the 17” width limitations of my Epson SCP5370. I reviewed my archive for images that could become compelling diptychs or triptychs, where there were natural clusters of images forming a grouping, or where central images could be augmented by supporting image. I tried to jointly optimize having each part of the overall stand on its own and the combination is at least as compelling as the solo version. Looking through my archive from a different point of view was a pleasure. I contributed to the multivariate techniques called Points-of-View Analysis during the first 25 years of my academic career (1969-94). We thought of data as information arrays in high dimensional space – tables, data cubes, and hypercubes -- and sought points of view that helped find the meaning in these data. All my academic degrees are in Psychology and the lessons in sensation and perception are ingrained enough to jolt me when I stumble across a stunning point of view. It’s not all stumbling as I can see many coming before I’m there. In 2012 I started travelling with a very good DSLR and the backpack of necessary accessories. Now I have a better equipment in my iPhone 17 Pro Max, an excellent phone camera in my pocket that makes every journey a photo adventure – and no backpack. I rarely go on a specific photo shoot, although a recent shoot in Malibu produced two images for this show – one that scales and one that doesn’t. More on this in a future post. My photography and printmaking are so strongly tied to my esthetic point of view that “Points-of-View” came in near the top of the list of possible show titles. To move from the boutique Lazarus Galley @TAG to the spacious North Gallery requires more than more of the same. My pieces command the spaces where the hang in homes. Gallery walls require more major pieces to command the extra vertical space. There is one feature space in the Lazarus gallery facing the entrance to the room. I took one of my favorite pieces, El Faro Sunset, and created a triptych where the strength of the geometry easily carries the eye across the mat and frame separating image parts. It took a 22”x28” framed piece in three 20”x40” sections. 60”x40” commanded that featured space. The North Gallery will require around 20 pieces that scale for gallery walls.

My criteria for inclusion in the upcoming show include selecting powerful images where each part stands on its own and the collection of parts visually merge into an appealing whole. Many images I love individually don’t scale. I forced myself into looking at my work with a different point of view – scalability. The first image I selected was Skip’s Pond, shot toward the pond behind my friend’s cabin in Jackson Hole, Wy.

The water feels wetter the closer you get. The majestic, late-summer, Wyoming trees and their watery reflections make every vertical slice of this image visually pleasing. I took three vertical slices and clamped the three 20x40 frames into 60x40. You have to see it live to decide how well it works for you. At home scale my photos that work draw viewers into the scene. In this case, it’s the beauty, serenity, and horizontal symmetry of this point of view that makes it so appealing. Those that know this pond know how special it is. The original photo was taken in 2014, before a family of River Otters detoured from the Snake River to feast on the trout planted in Skip’s Pond. When this photo was taken a National Geographic photographer was setting photo traps in the streamlets leading to the pond as part of a 2016 feature on River Otters and The Snake River. In the triptych version Bud is fishing at the 2-o’clock position in the frame and Skip is barely visible at the 11-o’clock spot under the tree. Skip was just being social since his strong preference was for seeking the biggest thing he could hook on a fly. My hope is the gallery version draws you in from a greater distance fantasizing even richer stories.

I plan to write future posts on other images I’ve selected for the show. I end this one with the view from Skip’s Pond back to his cabin.