PHOTOGRAPHY PROJECT: Marriage, Window Light, and the Cough of Doom

Name: Peter Lobdell
Age: 63, almost 64
Job: straight job: teaching acting and playwriting at Amherst College; real work: actor, performer, writer, director in professional theater
Location: Morningside Heights

1. Is there something in your past that you would like to have in your present/future?

Well, that's very difficult I've got what I've been doing for the last 35 years, and I'm going to do it now, and I hope to carry it into the future. I work in the theater. And I've been married to Greta for 18 years and I hope to carry that into the future.

2. What is currently the most important thing in your life?

Greta, our home, and our work in our home.

3. How do you imagine your future?

If you live a life in the arts, you learn to...not let go of the idea of the future, but you don't anticipate it, because every single major breakthrough in my career and in my life has happened without my planning for it - it's always been an accident. We do our work day to day, and we hope to keep on doing it day to day, and that's the only future, is the day to day. Then, of course, a major breakthrough comes through, I get a Broadway show, I meet Greta. Those things can't be planned for, they can't be demanded, so all I want to do is keep on keeping on.






Name: Greta Gundersen
Age: "52" (artistic age) - in the art world, it makes a difference
Job: Self-employed full-time painter
Location: Morningside Heights

1. Is there something in your past that you would like to have in your present/future?

It's impossible to change anything from your past. It's impossible! Of course there are tragic events, and major hurts, but that's where I am now.

2. What is currently the most important thing in your life?

My husband, my painting, and my hopes and expectations (for what I can paint). To stay involved with the painting, so that it will sustain me forever, and hopefully, recognition!

3. How do you imagine your future?

I don't know how to. Sometimes it scares me, sometimes I feel confident. I don't know how to imagine it, I don't, because anything could happen. I hope it stays with Peter, in our house that we built, and that we are creative forever, and we never die.

Greta and her husband Peter are the only non-strangers that I interviewed. They are two of my favorite people, because they are fun, intelligent, creative, and dedicated. Their marriage is like an advertisement for the institution of marriage (which I am generally somewhat skeptical about). If I were to get married, I would hope to have a relationship as (seemingly) loving as theirs. It was absolutely necessary to put their interviews/photographs into a single entry, because they are truly partners in everything that they do.

I think that their wonderful, wonderful faces represent their characters rather well.

In terms of photography, this shoot helped me discover the wonders of window light. Hail to window light, my friends! It is a beautiful thing.
(Note: photographs taken at the apartment at which I was staying, NOT in Peter and Greta's house)




(I have to say, being sick REALLY doesn't help one get a portfolio together. Go away, cough, nobody wants you.)