Roger Gordy

Michael Caine

2010-01-03T16:53:00.000-05:00

Michael Caine

2010-01-03T16:52:00.000-05:00

http://www.michaelcaine.org/

Senator Ted Kennedy

2009-09-10T11:43:00.005-05:00

Senator Ted Kennedy

2009-09-10T11:40:00.000-05:00

Harvard Square Street Musician

2008-07-21T14:15:00.004-05:00

Bob Simon

2008-07-21T14:14:00.003-05:00

2008-07-21T14:13:00.004-05:00

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

2008-07-21T14:12:00.003-05:00

Rebecca Paris

2008-07-21T14:10:00.002-05:00

Peter Kneisel

2008-07-21T14:07:00.003-05:00

Yes

2008-07-21T14:06:00.006-05:00

Senator Robert Byrd with Constitution in Hand

2008-07-21T14:06:00.005-05:00

Suzanne Vega

2008-07-21T14:05:00.003-05:00

2008-07-21T14:04:00.005-05:00

2008-07-21T14:04:00.002-05:00

The Look

2008-07-21T14:03:00.002-05:00

2008-07-21T14:02:00.002-05:00

Side Glance

2008-07-21T14:00:00.002-05:00

Jean de Segonzac

2006-12-07T03:02:00.001-05:00

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_de_Segonzac

Brother Blue

2006-12-07T01:00:00.005-05:00

To see more photos of Brother Blue

Senator Robert Byrd

2006-12-06T16:24:00.001-05:00

http://byrd.senate.gov/index.html

Sara

2006-12-03T02:00:00.001-05:00

Christos Tsardounis

2006-12-03T01:00:00.001-05:00

http://www.ariadnerestaurant.com/

Steve Almond

2006-12-02T23:58:00.001-05:00

http://www.stevenalmond.com/

Zadie Smith

2006-12-02T05:00:00.000-05:00

http://www.contemporarywriters.com/authors/?p=auth257

La Petite Jacqueline

2006-12-01T02:30:00.000-05:00

http://www.myspace.com/lapetitejacqueline

Sarah Borges

2006-12-01T02:00:00.001-05:00

http://www.sarahborges.com/home.html

Kristen Porter

2006-12-01T01:00:00.001-05:00

http://www.pathwaysboston.org/Newsroom/DirectorBio.html

David Brenner

2006-11-30T21:00:00.002-05:00

http://www.lvol.com/bios/e50.html

Alan Dershowitz

2006-11-30T20:00:00.001-05:00

http://www.alandershowitz.com/

Jimmy Carter

2006-11-30T19:00:00.003-05:00

http://www.jimmycarterlibrary.org/

Adam Sandler Jerry Seinfeld

2006-11-30T19:00:00.002-05:00

http://www.adamsandler.com/
http://www.sonypictures.com/tv/shows/seinfeld/

Lenny Clarke

2006-11-30T18:00:00.004-05:00

Dick Cavett

2006-11-30T18:00:00.003-05:00

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Cavett

Seamus Heaney

2006-11-30T17:00:00.001-05:00

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1995/heaney-bio.html

Art Spiegelman

2006-11-30T16:30:00.001-05:00

http://lambiek.net/artists/s/spiegelman.htm

Edie Brickell

2006-11-30T15:00:00.001-05:00

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edie_Brickell

Shawn Colvin

2006-11-30T14:00:00.000-05:00

http://www.shawncolvin.com/

Adam Sherman

2006-11-30T13:00:00.000-05:00

http://www.geocities.com/nemsbook/s/souls.htm

Janet LaValley

2006-11-30T12:18:00.000-05:00

http://www.stevelathamdesign.com/tribe/photos.htm

Rickie Lee Jones

2006-11-29T15:40:00.000-05:00

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rickie_Lee_Jones

John Cage

2006-11-29T14:45:00.002-05:00

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Cage

Richie Havens

2006-11-28T22:00:00.000-05:00

http://www.metroactive.com/papers/sonoma/10.02.97/spins-9740.html

Alice Neel

2006-11-17T12:00:00.000-05:00

http://www.aliceneel.com/main.html

Tina Weymouth

2006-11-16T23:30:00.000-05:00

http://www.talking-heads.net/tina.html

Dennis Congdon

2006-11-16T23:00:00.000-05:00

Sheila

2006-11-16T22:00:00.000-05:00

Abbie Hoffman

2006-11-16T21:29:00.000-05:00

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbie_Hoffman

Alison Gordy

2006-11-11T01:10:00.000-05:00

http://www.geocities.com/alisongordy/
http://alisongordy.blogspot.com/

Matt Gordy

2006-11-11T01:00:00.001-05:00

http://www.jazztonite.com/gordy.htm

Kelly Carmody

2006-11-08T08:57:00.000-05:00

http://www.kellycarmody.com/

Elizabeth

2006-11-07T13:00:00.000-05:00

Johnny Carrera

2006-11-07T03:00:00.000-05:00

http://www.quercuspress.com/johnny_carrera.htm

Judy

2006-11-06T15:25:00.000-05:00

Cape Cod Woman 1970

2006-11-05T14:00:00.000-05:00

Candi

2006-11-05T13:48:00.000-05:00

Nan and Gerrie

2006-11-04T13:30:00.000-05:00

Amy

2006-11-04T12:17:00.000-05:00

Rachel

2006-11-03T18:04:00.000-05:00

Janice

2006-11-03T13:52:00.000-05:00

Emily

2006-11-02T01:00:00.000-05:00

Raymond W. Lavin

2006-11-01T14:52:00.000-05:00

http://rlavin.blogspot.com/index.html

First Kiss

2006-11-01T02:00:00.000-05:00

Roger at age 3

2006-11-01T01:00:00.000-05:00

The Big Bio

2006-11-01T00:06:00.000-05:00

Born in Phila., Pa. the oldest of three. Lived very briefly in Washington DC while my father was in the service. Then moved to Tonawanda, NY, just north of Buffalo in a small track-housing town of Green Acres (named way before the television show of the same name). In 1965 my father changed jobs and we moved to Newton, MA. Through junior high and high school I stepped up my portrait work photographing my friends and family. In eleventh grade I became the photo editor of the Newtonite, the Newton High School newspaper which was great fun and got me out of several classes when I had to photograph a special event, sports, the mayor, etc. I learned a lot about laying out a newspaper going to Somerville with the other editors where we had the type set on old Linotype machines by ex-Boston Herald typesetters who had set up their own shop. The two guys who ran the shop were usually happy to see us every other Friday in the late afternoon. They were usually already into several nips of rum by the time we got there and were quite jolly. We would order cold pizza from the store across the street and start in on the page layout. We would give the copy to the guys who would type out and cast in hot lead the lines of type. The columns of type would then be locked in a metal chase, inked and hand proofed on to paper page by page with blank spaces where the photos would be stripped in at the printing company who would print the actual newspaper.

I went on to study painting, film making, and photography at the Rhode Island School of Design, in Providence, RI graduating in 1976 with a BFA in Film. I had a great time there learning how films are made. I concentrated on cinematography. The best part about that school was the people, students and faculty, making friends in many different mediums. Getting to know the band the Talking Heads before they became the Talking Heads. Drinking beers at Magoverns , being cracked up laughing with the now late Charlie Rocket of Saturday Nite Live infamy and Dances with Wolves. A very naturally funny guy, a great loss.

The school was also good at bringing in guest lecturers. Two of my photographic influences, Walker Evans and Irving Penn spoke. Quite eye opening to see and hear these two men. Evans didn..t really speak, he was wheeled in, wouldn..t take any questions from the students, just kept asking when it would be over and when he would get paid. A very unpleasant old man. Penn while he did talk and take questions was a very difficult man to work with, which would explain why he had such a high assistant turn over rate.

After RISD I returned home to Newton and became involved with a family friend, Jim Bottomly who was a paper sculptor. I learned how to make puppets and props and would go with Jim to schools to teach his techniques of paper mache and cardboard sculpture. One year we got the contract to make all the items mentioned in the song, the Twelve Days of Christmas for the John Langstaff..s Christmas Revels, all out of silver paper and cardboard. This period of time was wonderful and fun making a two headed dragon for some storytellers; a jester..s stick with movable jaw so that it could talk, many, many puppets.

After a year of this, economic pressures arose and I got a job at Whitehall Games just down the hall from Jim..s studio, as a drill press operator. I drill the holes in small blocks of wood that were silk screened with a tic tac toe grid or a baseball diamond or other games that were played with dice and wooden pegs. I did this for a month or so till one day the shipping clerk went to lunch and never came back, so I was promoted to shipping. I had know the company owner Oz Freedgood from one of Jim..s workshops and he knew of my artistic talents and eventually made me the designer/cost estimator of new products. This was still in the days of T-squares and plastic triangles and rulers. Head lines and titles were done with a new product called PressType or rub on lettering. The body copy technology had also improved away from hot Linotype to the new computer controlled Compugraphic photofont system, which you still had to take the copy to shops that had such a system as the machines were very expensive and had a very steep learning curve. Apple Computer was just starting to form and by the time Whitehall Games was sold, design and typesetting had changed so that the designer could do the whole job on a Mac.

Seeing the whole process of design and printing change from Linotype in high school to computer gave me a great appreciation of how far the graphics world has progressed in my short lifetime. With such powerful programs such as Quarkexpress and Photoshop,ninty percent of everything that is printed in the world is done this way. I have done this type of work for the past twelve years. Designing mostly books (both the covers and the interiors): fiction, non-fiction, poetry, coffee table, self-help, and children..s. I..ve worked for David R. Godine, publisher, Brookline Books, The Cottage Press, Heritage House, Candlewick Press and various private individuals on freelance projects. If I was lucky I got to use my photographs in these projects, which is always a nice bonus.

Getting back to my first true love, photograph. My father always took photographs and had a darkroom in the basement. At the age of seven he let me use one of his cameras and taught me how to develop black and white film in the kitchen and to print the photos in his darkroom. I would say that my father's love of portraits has been my greatest influence on my style of photography. I try and make portraits that are for the most part un-posed and as candid as possible. I find that my best work occurs when just before I push the trigger, I momentarily fall in love with that person and capture what I see as the most beautiful aspect of the person. I see no purpose in making images that aren..t beautiful of people, except news photojournalism. I have done some news photojournalism for the Lincoln Journal in Lincoln, MA. Most of that work was fun photographing events but I found that I really didn..t have the stomach for "hard news", like multiple car accidents on Route 2. The subject matter and the feeding frenzy of the other photo and video journalist is not a pretty sight. So between the rawness and extremely low pay I haven..t done that type of work in many years.

Last year I finally bought a digital SLR and now enjoy the freedom from chemicals, wasted film on bad shots and the ultimate joy of playing with my images in Photoshop. While still enjoy making a "straight" un-manipulated photo I like that I can treat the image more like a painting with the ability to add or subtract from the image and make it even more of my vision.