well, this is old "work in progress" which is totally related to my new
"work in progress" which is totally related to my old "work in progress"

we must go back a few years......picture me in grad school.....22 and
married with new baby bryan.....summer comes and i have an opportunity
to do a "test shoot" for national geographic...blew it....i mean blew
it....here are the first three sentences of  the letter i received
after my test from robert e.gilka, director of photography:

"Dear David,

You are young and strong. That is good. For what I have to tell you,
will make you feel sick and old."

the letter went on to detail my mistakes and why i was inappropriate to
work at national geographic magazine....

i swallowed hard.......walked around the block.....eyes moist....kicked
a can....second time around the block, i said to myself..."wait a
minute.....i hate color.....i hate those postcardy pictures i just took
for those editors......i hate national geographic....i will "show them"
and everyone what i really will "do" with my work!!! my true intentions!!

so, i head back to virginia beach ....tourist town where i lived.....no
art museum, but good waves sometimes...only thing was, i was a really
bad surfer ....decided i had to do what i had to do...4 weeks of summer
left....and a bruised ego to heal..so i powered  my '54 green hand
painted ford 16 miles to norfolk, drove into the "ghetto",  and did not go back
home for awhile...my goal....save the neighborhood....thus, i ended
up living with a black family for the rest of the summer and did my
first "away from my own culture" photographic essay....

15 rolls of film was more than i could afford....i slept on the
family's sofa...set up a little darkroom nearby and carefully made my
own prints.....with my friend charles hofheimer (who was headed for the
peace corps and whose father loaned us the money to publish) we printed
i do not remember how many copies of "tell it like it is"...the layout was elegantly done by my college roommate, masaaki okada....there are
now only 4 known copies in the world....when i went back to grad school
i think we dumped the copies that had not been sold!!!.. bruce davidson
says i should re-publish...but every once in awhile i dream of finding
a forgotten box of these now priceless jewels somewhere in my mom's
garage..

we priced this little soft back book out at $2. per copy..the money went to
the baptist church on the corner....in order to "save the
neighborhood"...i figured awareness was the key to saving society from
itself....i was wrong....that neighborhood is now about the same as it
was way back then...

but, i did secure a small exhibit at what is now the chrysler
museum.....the norfolk virginian-pilot ran a picture page.....i
received a grant from the virginia museum of fine arts....i never looked
back after that....i told myself from then on that i would always be
true to myself...never do work that i was not proud of....never do
something  "for someone else"....or worse, shoot in a style that was
not my own....at this same time, i was studying the work of gene smith,
robert frank and henri cartier-bresson and i wanted to be in their
world...

this is not to say that i did not and do not work very hard for my
"clients".....i do....i flat out need the funding to do my work, to
live, to survive, to get my sons through college....but, i stay very
artistically "selfish"....i turn my work projects into personal
projects......"divided soul" was created mostly from a series of
assignments....i knew i was doing a book...national geographic never
knew , never cared...appropriately the editors just wanted solid honest coverage of that particular story....it would not and should not be their role to be thinking about my "master plan"...they just want what they need for their readers........one assignment at a time...so, i keep my "funders" happy, but i keep myself happy too
and make sure i own the copyright on every picture i make (including ad
shoots).

ok, so how in the world is this blast from the past "work in progress"
for today?? because it is part of one big circle...i have been involved
with photographing african descended cultures ever since....now , all
the way to "hip hop" where i just spent months shooting the south bronx
projects for a story coming up next month in national geographic titled
"hip hop planet" with a brilliant text by james mcbride  author of
"color of water"....robert e. gilka, the author of the "dear david you
are young and strong letter" will be around to see this in print....and,
well, by the way, he did eventually give me about 20 assignment for
the magazine during his tenure...thanks bob, you will always be young
and strong!!

my experiences from the norfolk 'hood helped me recognize the "moves"
from the south bronx "gangsta rappers" i had chosen as my new friends this
past year....when my brothers  "uptown" and "ruckus" visit my new york
loft, they pour through my photography books...they each have copies of
my books and "magnum stories" and i have made them be very aware that
they are collaborators with me in this hip hop work...my dream is to be
at a book signing somewhere with "uptown" and "ruck" signing
away....how cool would that be??

please come to the exhibtion opening  june 14 at the "powerhouse arena"
in  "dumbo" new york and there will be a  hip hop book in the fall 
published by "powerhouse books" ....i will not dump any unsold copies....