Betsy Warner Yellow Wall 1984

Betsy Warner wearing a black and red cotton flannel  dress in front of the yellow wall which used to be at 6th street and Stone Avenue. I thought this was interesting as now I’m always telling people to look into the light which would have made this photo stronger but I had not learned that style direction yet. May 1984 Tucson Arizona.

Lenita Oderfaldt Perry Ellis NYC

Swedish Super Model Lenita Oderfaldt at the Perry Ellis Showroom in New York City. I shot this assignment for the newspaper USA Today October 29th 1985. I think she made at least three times as much money on this shoot as I did. Ok Ten times. We had like 20 minutes to shoot the photo and the showroom was all dark so we just shot up against the marble column, with a Hasselblad 500cm camera and the lighting was Vivitar 283 flashes off a flat reflective panel. I had to take everything down there in a Taxi. I wonder what she is doing now? I wonder if she remembers working with me? HAHHAHAHAH!

Dusk in Manhattan Empire State Building 1986

From my rooftop in New York City looking NW toward the Empire State Building. I like this shot as you can see in some of the apartments in the foreground and the Empire State Building is kind of secondary to that. For a while my Friend Kinga lived in apartment that looked over to the building with the gold roof.

The Virgin of Guadeloupe Castillo 1983

The Vato who I only knew as Martin until I met his relative 25 years after I shot this photo. Martin Guadalupe Castillo was walking down the West 29th in street in South Tucson when I stopped and asked if I could take his photo. They posed in front of the Low Rider Mural and he told me he wanted to show me his tattoo. He was so proud of his tattoo he rolled up his shirt while I clicked off two frames, he said, she protects me, as he told me about the scars in his back from being stabbed in knife fights. He was so proud to have me stop to document this small part of his life. He was a real bad-ass gang member drug dealer and heroin addict.  Although I was impressed by the way he treated me with total respect as I expressed interest in his life and his story.  I always wondered what had happened to him and thought about photographing him later in life. His half sister came by one day and told me about his life. She was only 8 years old when Uncle Marty as she called him, used to cook her biscuits while she stood on a highchair in her families kitchen. I renamed this image after she told me his whole name. Martin was on a really difficult pathway in life which ended a few months after I shot this image back in 1983.

Vato’s West 29th Street 1983

Martin Guadeloupe Castillo and his understudy in front of mural painted by artist Luis Mena on the side of Ray and Sons Tire shop located on West 29th Street in South Tucson. After I shot this photo he rolled up his shirt to show me the tattoo on his back. February 1983

Hood Ride New York City SOHO 1986

I was walking down West Broadway in SoHo one day in 1986 when I turned to hear a man yelling and a Bright Red Camaro peeling around the corner. An Italian guy holding onto the hood yelling at his friends in the car to slow down, he was wearing bright red sweat pants with a tank top and a gold chain around his neck. I reached for my camera fired off three frames as they sped on down the road. Another artist named Rene always used to paint “I AM THE BEST ARTIST” on the walls in SoHo and you can see it blurred out in the background. I lived in New York City for a year and never rode the subway once, although I was always ready for whatever life on the streets of Manhattan would have to offer.

This was photographed with a Nikon F3 Camera on Kodachrome 64 Film, when Kodak used to process slide film they would burn their processed by Kodak into the edge of the film backwards. There is a backwards N which means it was processed in Kodaks Lab in Newark New Jersey,  it shows the frame number 4a, near the start of the roll and you can even see where the camera sprockets left marks on the film sprocket holes as I was shooting at six frames per second.

New York City Marathon

The Start of the New York City Marathon from atop the Verrazano Narrows Bridge, the 30,000 runners at the start of the race completely cover the bridge. This view from atop the Staten Island Tower is 500 feet above the runners and 700 feet above the water. An unusually clear morning for the NYC Marathon start this image also shows the cables which were in the process of being repainted which ad to the depth of the photograph.

The image  shows the Film type PKR 5033 is Kodachrome 64, when Kodak used to process slide film they would burn their processed by Kodak into the edge of the film backwards. There is a backwards N which means it was processed in Kodaks Lab in Newark New Jersey,  it shows the frame number 31, near the end of the roll and you can even see where the camera sprockets left marks on the film sprocket holes as I was shooting at six frames per second. There is even a story to be told in sprocket holes.

Little Red Jam New York City 1985

57th street Manhattan, when this little red Toyota Celica tried to cut around the city bus it became stuck between the wheels of a large dump truck and the front wheel of the bus. The funny part of the story was that the guy had a sunroof, so, he climbed out and was shouting at the driver of the truck to back the hell up.

Elephants in the Midtown Tunnel 1986

The Greatest Show on Earth marches through the Mid-Town Tunnel into Manhattan after midnight. All traffic is stopped in the tunnel and a parade of circus animals walk the 1.5 miles to Madison Square Garden in the darkened city streets. You would think they would just walk but elephants take steps that are like six feet long so you end up running the entire length of the tunnel and you are actually on a service walkway so it was pretty hard to navigate. March 23rd 1986

US Navy F-14 Breaking the Sound Barrier

Breaking Mach One, a Grumman United States Navy F-14 Tomcat jet fighter aircraft breaking the sound barrier at 720 miles per hour at 500 feet above sea level. Shot from the flight Deck of the USS Nimitz Aircraft Carrier over the Pacific Ocean. You can see the transonic vapor on the wings and even the pilots inside. This plane is moving really fast. The sound barrier is a scientific anomaly in which as a aircraft reaches the speed of sound, the speed at which sound waves travel, a shock wave forms around the aircraft. This shock-wave forms a cone like shape around the aircraft which only exists for for less than a quarter of a second. The aircraft is moving so fast by the time you see it coming if you do not already have you camera up and focused you will miss the shot. This was the first time I saw this  happen and the two subsequent times I missed the shot and all I had on film was the tail  and the jet stream off of the plane.

250 MPH Fork Saragosa Texas Tornado 1987

A common kitchen fork driven into a shredded tree trunk by winds near 250 miles  per hour at the Saragosa, Texas tornado disaster which killed more than 30  people. A woman who had survived the tornado in her closet pointed this out to me in her back yard the day after the deadly tornado. This tornado was rated an F4 on the Fujita scale and had winds over 200  miles per hour creating devastating damage  to this tiny farming community of 187 people, 121 injured. This tornado occurred at 8:15pm May, 22, 1987. I shot this photo the next day when a woman who had survived the tornado grabbed me by the arm and said do you want to see something really neat? Come to whats left of my house on the south side of town. She showed me this fork driven into a tree in her backyard and she also showed me the closet she survived inside. Half of her house was gone lucky for her she survived in the other half.

Union City New Jersey 1986

The sun sets over Union City New Jersey across the Hudson River shot from the West Side Highway in Manhattan. Saint Michael’s church is silhouetted next to row houses which run along the rivers edge. The row houses in this image were  demolished and replaced by condo towers in the 1990’s, the church is still there. Shot with a Nikon F3 Camera 300mm Nikkor Lens on Kodachrome Film.

NYU Dorm Construction 1986

My view over lower Manhattan changed over a period on months when New York University began construction on a new student dorm on Third Avenue. This is shot from my bedroom window on a hot hazy summer afternoon. Construction workers are finishing the curved roof by using large buckets of concrete lowered from a large construction crane. NYU would later demolish the Paladium Night Club which was across the street from my apartment to build additional student housing.

Hands Across America New York City 1986

Photographed on Manhattans West Side Highway, Sunday, May 25, 1986 approximately 6.5 million people held hands in a human chain for fifteen minutes along a path across the continental United States from New York City to Long Beach California. Proceeds raised by the event were donated to local charities to fight hunger and homelessness and help those in poverty.

Rooftop Dinning, New York City 1986

My bedroom window looks out on the lovely rooftop diner party at dusk in Manhattan. There were big stories to be told over stir-fry and wine on the Brownstone roof-top located near 14th Street near 3rd Avenue.

New Wave Smile 1984

Sandy Everett in a New Wave fashion clothing poses in downtown Tucson Arizona. This photograph was my business card back in the 1980's. I wanted to be a fashion photographer thats is the reason I moved to New York City in 1985. I did not really think about why this image means so much to me until I just printed all these images for the my 1980's Archive Show. After looking at all the hard news photos I shot in the years I worked at the Tucson Ciitzen Newspaper, I began to think maybe I just wanted to get away from all the daily tragedy of working in the news business and this image of a smiling happy girl with some blue sky sums up a much easier life happier life. Yeah I think thats what I was thinking back then even if I did not really know that back then.

Sunbathing on the Ramps 1984

With their Ghetto blaster playing tunes on cassettes, University of Arizona Engineering students from New York City, George Smith, a Freshman and Kris Kyle, a Sophomore, soak up some Arizona sunshine on the ramps at Arizona Stadium.

Top Fuel Dragster 1982

Top Fuel Dragster driver Jerry Darien eyes peer through a fireproof Nitro Mask as he awaits his run at the Tucson Dragway.

Nothing Remains, Saragosa Texas

Three Generations of the Lopez family return at dawn to the site where their house stood the day before. There was nothing remaining, the concrete slab where their house had stood for many years was scraped clean by the killer F4 Tornado. The small West Texas  town of Saragossa, Texas was home to 200 residents more than 30 had lost their lives as the storm with winds in excess of 200 miles per hour moved through town.