Raphael Shevelev’s Voice: Archive

Humanity’s major preoccupation is with humanity. We are, so to speak, of the genus homo narcissus, and that describes much of our concern. Portraiture is the natural result of the urge to record images of ourselves, in all manner of repose and activity. As Remy Saisselin wrote in Style, Truth

Creating is difficult and demanding work. Ask any creator. We know it requires a synthesis of imagination and high technical skill, but we frequently forget that the act of creating is also allied to humor and play. Play is thought of as a childish pursuit, not appropriate for adults in

I’m frequently asked “How did you do that?” I don’t mind telling, but with the following caveat: it’s the least important question that I’m asked, the one least useful to other artists, especially those who pursue the least line of resistance. Show me how you did that so I can

Once a week, I think on Saturday mornings, the fruit and veggie man would come calling in his old Dodge Brothers truck. He’d blow the horn, and housewives on our block, including my mother, would go to meet him and bargain for his wares. Like the fish man with his

Days before a banana was taped to a wall and recently sold for a reputed $120,000 at Art Basel Miami, a prehistoric sculpture of a dinosaur was found taped to a basement wall in a home in El Cerrito, California. One can imagine the surprise of workers clearing the area

To Comfort the Disturbed and Disturb the Comfortable: Camera Clubs, Photography and the Art World In the country of Art World, in the great State of Photoland, lies the green and pleasant Vale of Cameraclubville, surrounded by picturesque though forbidding mountains. Cameraclubville is populated by courteous folk, mannered, calm and

The other day, I was talking with a colleague about photographing places that have been photographed many times before. He wondered out aloud about finding innovative ways to represent that most photographed of all places, the Taj Mahal. He’s a good friend, so I let him in on a secret,

My European refugee parents had ambitions for their only child. Mother wanted a doctor, and bought me a stethoscope for my twelfth birthday. It provided an opportunity to examine my friends, boys and especially girls, able to give optimistic diagnoses except in the case of my friend Harry, with whom

My first experience with the British Royal Family came when I was a little boy in Cape Town, South Africa. King George VI, Queen Elizabeth and the Princesses, Elizabeth and Margaret, arrived there for a State Visit in 1947. Part of a little pool of children from which would be

So many photographers, or just people with cameras, seem to have an almost sexual obsession with recording petals and pistils, as though copying something intrinsically beautiful will somehow make them good photographers. It’s a lot like taking snapshots of pretty people and claiming on that basis to be a fine

We owe to composer, musicologist and satirist Peter Schickele our profound gratitude for having discovered his alter ego, P.D.Q. Bach, “the youngest and stupidest of the Bach children.” Quoting from memory, with appropriate apologies, “In an age when it was common for composers to steal musical ideas from each other,

David Hockney is a genius. To see his work in several media is to become deeply entwined in what Arthur Koestler, in his book The Act Of Creation, calls ‘the magic synthesis’- that intimate, lasting bond between an artist and the audience. It’s as profound as, for instance, the deliberate

It’s no news at all that China has been stealing intellectual property from all the major intellectual property producers in the world. This was well known to U.S. Presidents Carter, Reagan, George H. W. Bush (who had served as U. S. Ambassador to China), Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama.

Would you consider being a character witness for my Senate confirmation hearing? At last, a really good — and totally appropriate — job in the White House is available, and the President has decided to nominate me. This week, speaking in San Diego, he proposed a new Space Force, and I’m ready to serve

I am not now, nor ever have been, a threat to the reputation of Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay. I had climbed Table Mountain, then almost in my back yard, and the view of my birth city, Cape Town, and its harbor, from the elevation of 3,500 feet, was

My mother was born one hundred and eight years ago, in 1909, in the village of Yliakiai, in Northwest Lithuania. She used its Yiddish name “Yelok.” She was one of four children who were orphaned very, very young. With some community help, the oldest child, Esther, then just a teenager,

Over the years, I’ve come across so many Ansel Adams wannabes, Wynn Bullock wannabes, Michael Kenna wannabes and many others who’d prefer to be someone other than who they are. I’ve been drawn to the conclusion that imitation is the sincerest form of mindlessness. I’ve managed to escape that. Though

Over the years, I’ve come across so many Ansel Adams wannabes, Wynn Bullock wannabes, Michael Kenna wannabes and many others who’d prefer to be someone other than who they are. I’ve been drawn to the conclusion that imitation is the sincerest form of mindlessness. I’ve managed to escape that. Though

After a stay in a hospital near my home in Berkeley, California, I received a questionnaire from the Administrator. I responded that I had been delighted with the courtesies and professionalism of the nurses, technicians and physicians, but I resented the antisemitism. On my second morning there, my breakfast tray

Once a week, usually in the morning, the fruit and vegetable man drove his Jewish truck down our street in Cape Town, stopping outside our home and blowing the horn. Until I walked out to look at his truck, I didn’t know motor vehicles could be Jewish. But there it

When my parents were very young, only a few years older than my grandson is now, they fled their Baltic homes from the growing ugliness of European anti-Semitism. Much of the Western world was closed to them, so they found refuge in South Africa. In 1936, in their mid-twenties, they

By my third night in India, I was exhausted, though my entry had been gentled by calmer days in Nepal. After dinner I walked slowly back to my tent, and sat down heavily on the cot. I was in Pushkar for the annual camel fair, staying in the brightly colored

As a lad, I’d imagine riding my penny-farthing bicycle to the bakery, doffing my straw boater respectfully to posters of my Sovereign, H. M. Queen Victoria. Now I drive to the bakery in my silver-grey SUV, and to many other destinations that could not have been accomplished on my bike.

I wore my best blue suit to meet Harry Springett. In a place where even modest dwellings were named, my parents took me to “Fairhaven,” 15 Flower Street, The Gardens, Cape Town. Mr. Springett was the first photographer I’d met. A little shy of my first birthday, Dad and Mom

I see a great number of images. I make a few myself, and I subscribe to remarkable journals put out by the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain,LensWork, others devoted to the image, and those made by many artists, some of whom I know. I see works exhibited in museums,

My wife nudged me awake and said “I have a pain in my belly.” “Not surprising,” I said, “given all the boerewors (farmer’s sausage) we ate at the neighbor’s braaivleis (barbecue) last night. Would you like Alka-Seltzer?” She said “I don’t think that’s the reason. I think the baby is

A friend who is a fine, accomplished and well-published poet recently stopped by. She looked at one of the pictures on the dining room wall and said “Photoshop?” I said “Cerebrum.” Then I asked her what word processor she used to compose her poems. From her chastened look, I gathered

Davey Neipris of Boston, Mass., gave me a left-profile portrait of George Washington. It’s crafted in metal, fractionally short of an inch in diameter, and cost him no more than 25 cents. That was in the days when you could get a cup of coffee, including a refill, for 5

On a unique occasion, before I entered elementary school, my mother spoke of her birthplace. She called it “Yelok,” the Yiddish form of Ylakiai. It was then a tiny village, a shtetl, in northwest Lithuania, with a population of less than one thousand. About half of them were Jewish. My

We talked with each other for twelve years. To be honest, I did most of the talking, he did most of the listening. I knew he was actively engaged because he would cock his head slightly, just so, and look at me unblinkingly with his warm, beautiful brown eyes. We

On the Saturday before Rosh Hashanah in 1946, before my eighth birthday, I accompanied my parents to visit my only remaining grandparent, Blume-Devorah Westermann-Shevelev. The others had all died in Latvia and Lithuania before I was born. We lived in a flat on the lower slope of Table Mountain, with

In January 1947 my father’s pride and joy arrived. His only child was then eight years old. The brand new 1946 Chevrolet Fleetmaster, grey with a blue top, had been transported to Cape Town by rail from South West Africa (formerly German West Africa, now Namibia) where my mother’s only

It is simply a dining-room chair of pleasing design. Over the years it has acquired distinction because of the remarkable glutei maximi that it has cradled. Guests have included college presidents, scholars from Berkeley, The California College of the Arts, Stanford, Yale, Oxford, Tuebingen, my alma mater the University of

A few months ago I was invited to give an address to a local photographic arts group. I titled my talk “The Urge to Create,” in the course of which I had emphatically dismissed the idea of “rules” in the creation of art. At the end of the meeting, a

Humanity’s major preoccupation is with humanity. We are, so to speak, of the genus homo narcissus, and that describes much of our concerns. Portraiture is the natural result of the urge to record images of ourselves, in all manner of repose and activity. As Remy Saisselin wrote in Style, Truth

Twenty-five years ago I first saw the wall at Battery Mendell, a reinforced concrete gun emplacement, completed by 1905, to guard the entrance to San Francisco Bay. It is situated in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, north of the bridge. In the bright sunlight one could count the generations

In 1964, the United States Embassy in Pretoria, South Africa, had two Fourth of July parties. One was for people of all ethnicities. The other was a reception for government officials, “sanitized” for whites only. Invited to attend, I declined, repelled by this American tolerance of apartheid. A few days

Many, many years ago, in deep midsummer, I journeyed to consult with the wisest of all people, the Oracle of Delphi. The arduous horseback ride north of Athens was quite uncomfortable, especially the last twenty kilometers into the mountains. Arriving at the top of the hill, where the temple is

Aloneness, solitude, is frequently a choice, even a necessity. Loneliness, however, implies a yearning for connection. Both are conditions familiar to artists, and sometimes flow into each other. The literature, including poetry, on aloneness and loneliness, is more than ample. Some of it is encouraging, some empathetic, some contradictory, some

She was so extraordinarily beautiful that I couldn’t avert my gaze for many minutes. Her eyes met and held mine for that entire time. I knew then that in the years to come, she would have an effect on my life and work. The red hair, those amazing blue eyes,

Earlier in my life, when I was much more engaged with politics and macro-economics, I was offered an executive position in the international department of a major bank. During the interview I was asked about my economic philosophy, particularly whether I tended to side with Milton Friedman of the Chicago

Creating is difficult and demanding work. Ask any creator. We know it requires a synthesis of imagination and high technical skill, but we frequently forget that the act of creating is also allied to humor and play. Play is thought of as a childish pursuit, not appropriate for adults in

In the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, my father would occasionally bring home from the synagogue on Friday nights a person or couple who had survived the Holocaust. In the warm South African summer of 1945-6, I saw a number on a dinner guest’s arm. When I asked

That’s a good question to ask of a surgeon before an operation. It’s usually also a good question to ask of a financial counselor, an electrician, or the pilot of a chartered aircraft. But there are occasions when the question is the last or only resort of a potential employer