I just got Unmasking the Face[1] today. One of the authors, Dr. Paul Ekman was a consultant for the TV show, ‘Lie to Me’, about a deception expert. I am excited for a several reasons: 1) maybe this book will help me better understand what people are feeling by learning the secrets of expressions, hidden […]
Setting At home, circa 1960; My brother Mike was still at home. My parents found some doc; her name was Dr. May as I recall. She had some ideas about autism and needed data (read: blood) from family members of autistic children, to test a theory or to form a hypothesis or something. What did I […]
Yesterday, I posted a portrait of myself as I was traveling to Mike‘s plane of existence. Even though I can’t share any details of our visit (believe me I would love to if I could), I was able to capture the essence of our visit. However before you see it, I need to provide you […]
This is a self portrait I took, just before I went to visit Michael on his plane of existence. It looks just like I am evaporating; my sense of identity merging with the ether. But it isn’t. I went to visit Michael. It was good, but I can’t tell you any details about our time […]
1. My brother Michael: low functioning, nonverbal and autistic. 2. Soldier, the first teleplay by sci-fi writer Harlan Ellison, was an episode of Outer Limits first aired on 19 September, 1964.
This is a photograph of me as a kid. Actually, it is a photograph from one of my family’s 8mm home movies, which was converted to videotape, played back on a raster television monitor and paused on this frame. I don’t remember what I was feeling at that particular moment and request your assistance in […]
As promised, an essay written circa 1996 about my older brother and me: I am an artist and my brother is an autist: Only one letter difference; two letters apart in the alphabet. If you speak with a New York accent, we are the same. When I was born, my big brother Michael was […]
It has been my experience that children love to hear stories about themselves from when they were babies. “I really did that?” or “I said that when I was 9 months old?” they say, with incredulity. They never seem to tire of asking. I’ve noticed that some unsolicited stories from elders are not greeted with […]
When I first started my photography project about my brother, one of my instructors asked me what it was about. I explained that my older brother was low functioning, nonverbal and autistic and I wanted to show his life. “Is your project going to be a mirror or a window?” he asked. I looked puzzled. […]
Once I started my photo project about my brother Michael, I brought it to each class I took. One of my first photography classes was with Nubar Alexanian at the International Center of Photography (ICP) in New York City. The first day was a review of everyone’s work. This is one of the pictures I […]
