Then and Then and Now

During the time when I was a full-time freelance photographer, I photographed countless people, places and things. Nevertheless, on occasion I turned my camera onto myself to capture times that I thought I would want to remember in the distant future.

Sometimes I wanted to experiment with lighting and poses that I used later with other subjects who were friends, neighbors and coworkers. At other times, I wanted to express the mood I was in, if I was deep in thought or in a location that was special to me.

I didn't know that technology would evolve to one day allow me to make significant changes to an image while keeping the basic original photograph relatively intact. The recent alterations and combinations of the photo on this page create fresh thoughts while the view of me is still grounded in the past.

It might be helpful if I posted even more of the other versions that I made of this photo which was originally on black and white film, so that they could all be compared and the ways in which I have altered the image would be more evident. Some of the additional images are quite different from each other. But suffice it to say that all versions share with the original a similar feel.

Self-portraits of this kind also appear in my non-public journals, including one entitled Introspections which contains much more background information about each image, including the time in which I created them and the additional meanings they carry.

The major aspect of photographs like this one is that they capture a long ago but significant time in my life that I will never forget. They also, as new versions, are renewed.

In these versions, I have turned away from myself (top) and separated from my past (more than once), yet in another view I am turning toward myself (bottom) and reconnecting to myself (not only in the past but also in the present). The previous Marcs are still there, but of course a whole lot has changed inside and outside of him. Thus he these are my then and my then, in a dialogue with himself and with my now

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