When I was just out of college at 22, I decided to move to New York for a year to work as a photographer’s assistant. I thought that this was a good way to learn the photography business and eventually start out on my own.
The rent on my first apartment, just off Central Park West on W. 76th Street, was $270. Today, that sounds like a trivial amount of money, but in 1975, my first job as a full time assistant paid $150/week.
I was working for a photographer who had a still life studio. Once we spent a week on a Tullamore Dew photograph, working with an 8x10 camera photographing onion and banana sandwiches next to a glass of the Irish whiskey. At one point he turned to me and said, "I bet you didn't think you'd move to New York to photograph onion and banana sandwiches."
Though I love Edward Weston's photographs, my influences were more along the line of Cartier-Bresson and photojournalism. To decompress from still life photography, I decided to do a “Me in New York” series. I was going to photograph myself at New York landmarks, for example, standing outside of the Village Vanguard jazz club with my flugelhorn case. I enlisted my best friend Kenny to click the camera after I had set it up on a tripod.
