By the time I wandered into the offices of Time/Life on 6th avenue in 1983, I had produced ay least a few dozen of my contact print photo collages. I had work in a few different shows, including two solo shows in 1983, and I was always walking my portfolio around. My work caught the attention of John Loengard and Bob Ciano, who put a portfolio spread into the ‘Camera At Work’ section. It was a big deal for me, and I awaited anxiously that Summer for the issue to hit the newsstands. When it did, the first thing I thought was: WTF is Willie Nelson doing on the cover of MY LIFE magazine? Why not Elvis Costello or something?? And why in Gods name did they set up the spread with the Boat collage across from that crass yellow weight-loss ad? And why the subscription card there?? And who printed this this thing anyway, it’s all dark and plugged up! It was my initiation into a lifetime of seeing my precious work get mangled in printing. Ahh, but I digress. It really was a great experience. My parents, my father: “That’s my boy! That’s my son, in LIFE magazine!”. It was a big deal for those of their era. I think they paid an honorarium type fee of a few hundred dollars, but when they lost the original art to my ‘Photo Booth Collage’ (see alternate below) they forked over $1,500 which was the going rate for lost original photography art. My mother couldn’t wrap her head around this valuation. “$1,500 for a few photo booth photographs??” Anyway these three images were some of my more popular at the time. The Shea Stadium picture was done on a not-so-well-attended fan appreciation day. Paula, Francine and Jerald were with me, and if you look carefully you’ll see how I had them move around to fill the empty seats. Some part of Paula is visible in each of the 15 strips making up the 360°. The Boat collage has been in many a show since, and the Pool collage, made in 1979 at the shallow end of the pool with my sister Tracy as the de-facto assistant/model, was made into a 3D sphere for another later show. As it turns out, my work was a precursor to VR, and I eventually converted a handful of these into VR environments a few years ago.
David McGlynn 