I came to Berkeley in 1961 to go to graduate school. While that sounds like the first line of a novel, I couldn’t know, at the time, that Berkeley would become and remain “home” and that the novel, although never written, would be set right here.

I’ve been taking photos in Berkeley since I moved here but most of the pictures in this gallery are new and digital. The photograph of the old art museum (“archaic”) is identical to one I took in the early 60s except in that one my mother and my aunt Rose, who were visiting, were standing under a corner of the mural.

There is no intention of making the photos tell a story either of Berkeley or of my life here. Nor is the gallery meant to portray Berkeley comprehensively. These are snapshots, curiosities, glances rather than evaluations or conclusions. Most of the shops I’ve taken pictures of I’ve never entered -- it was the facade that caught my attention. On the other hand, a number of the pictures were taken in my favorite cafe -- but that cafe remains unidentified because I’ve never been able to get a satisfying photo of its entrance.

Some of the people in the gallery are friends but most people pics are of strangers. Although there’s been an element of nostalgia in the preparation of this gallery there’s very little of that in the gallery itself. I’ve gone through a lot of slide film people photos but most of the pictures were either of inferior quality to begin with or have deteriorated over the years. Happy exceptions are “norm - 1992” and “andrew”.

When I travel in foreign countries I always feel that I’ll only have that one chance to capture a scene -- a bad photo or a lost card or a broken storage device (not to mention a battery that runs out of charge) could doom a trip. In Berkeley, however, there will be another opportunity to photograph the same scene. It seems as if that’s been the story of my life here in the city that’s home -- there will always be another chance.