When I was a young guy and looking to establish myself as a professional photographer, I visited the downtown studio of a well known commercial photographer. He specialized in catalog work, primarily for the jewelry industry which was still a big thing in this area then. I had heard he was looking to hire a new assistant. The studio was quite impressive, and they were indeed working on a jewelry catalog shoot at that moment. I watched while an assistant crouched under an 8x10 camera with a little stick and carefully pushed a gold chain into the desired position, link by link. A nervous-looking art director hovered nearby. “Oh my god, I can’t work that way, I’d go mad!” I thought — all that effort for a gold chain. It was that and the photographer’s requirement for a mandatory drug test that put me on a different career path. And so here we are.
Working on a piece in the RISD Museum collection; Mae Luther, Necklace, ca. 1930, 2000.51