BIO
Traditionally, the bio section is composed of birth places, degrees, accolades…a brief impersonal depiction of the road a photographer took to arrive where he or she is today. Part of me is scared to digress from this template, but the better part wants to dive right in, or rather push the reader right in.
So instead of writing about how I got here, I’m choosing to go deeper and tell you why. Not every part is lighthearted, but there’s dignity and beauty in truth. My clients open up and trust me daily, so this is the least I can do:
I was born in Israel the son of an elegant, poised and incorrigibly cerebral lady, and her husband, an unapologetic, eccentric yet brilliant doctor with a zest for life. One taught me how to think. The other taught me how to feel.
My mother explains that my fascination with people began at infancy:
“I couldn’t take Nogen with me in the stroller if I was in a hurry. He would deliberately smile at every passerby, silently wooing them. Strangers would stop me just to interact with him.”
I maintained this love of people throughout my childhood. But at seven-years-old, my life took a sharp turn as my father moved our family to a town outside Boston. I didn’t know it at the time but this move set in motion the gears that created my passion for imagery.
We settled in an isolated apartment complex with no kids around. A highway in front, and a forest in the back. The only thing my sister and I could do was use our imaginations.
And so we did. In between watching my dad’s Italian romance films, I would bike for hours at a time, imagining fantastical worlds and romance… always romance.
Except the real world is not quite that romantic, at least not in Massachusetts. Emerging from childhood I found the worldview I concocted in the shelter of my skull was not suitable to brave the elements of society and all its “shortcomings”. I didn’t want to lie to myself, but I also desperately wanted to live in beauty.
So, in a way, photography was my destiny. After all, what could be more satisfying to a boy like me than actually being able to see my imagination come to life? AND I get to work with people? Duh, sign me up!
Today, I wake up engulfed in romance and romantic images, passionate to work with people for whom I have a deep and ineffable fascination. I don’t shoot events or weddings. That side of photography isn’t me. Rather than documenting, my obsession is with creating small moments out of thin air. Moments that exist only at the intersection of truth and beauty. I proudly reject the notion that the two are mutually exclusive. There is beauty in genuineness, and there is genuineness in all true beauty.
