My first Portrait Show, up in the Round House Cafe for nearly two months, came down today, in its place a wonderful show by the cartoonist, photographer, artist and illustrator Ray Favata. The photos and the drawings are wonderful, they were done in New York City in the 1940’s and 50’s.

It is one of the best and most evocative shows I’ve ever seen, there are drawings and pastels as well as beautiful black and white photographs, street scenes and landscapes from New York City. Favata now lives in Cambridge.

The portrait show was a seminal creative experience for me, I am deeply into portrait work now, I take portrait pictures of almost everyone who comes to visit our farm. Portrait work, I am learning, is a very particular skill, the relationship between the photographer and the subject is critical.

Of the 26 portraits, we sold 8 or 9 of them, which is pretty good for a portrait show, and will barely break even. We are giving the remaining photos to the subject who so graciously posed for me, no charge. Scott asked me if I would do another portrait show, if I did one, it might be the residents of the beautiful residents of the Mansion Assisted Care Facility.

There are some beautiful faces and portraits to take, these faces should be seen.

But I don’t think that can happen for awhile, photography is undergoing a great change. It costs a lot of money to print photos and frame them, there is a long list of things to pay for first. Maria was incredibly inventive about the cost of this show, she did the framing herself and scoured the Internet for low prices. It still cost more than $1,000 to mount the show, and that is the struggle professional photographers (as opposed to writers who love to take pictures)  undertake in a world where there are tens of millions of Iphone photographers, many of them are very, very good.

For all that, I love taking these photos, I learned much about portraits and will keep taking them and publishing them on the blog. I loved doing this show and am grateful to the many people who came to see the photos and told me they loved them. It was well worth it.

Maria was amazing at helping me with my equipment, curating the show, framing and hanging the pictures. I am a lucky man.