David Mandel has been taking photographs since he was 13. His first camera was his father’s antique Kodak Autographic. It was hard to find film for it in his hometown, Port Arthur, Texas--the same oil refinery town from which both Janis Joplin and Robert Rauschenberg escaped. With that ancient camera, David photographed the family dog, neighbor kids, and telephone poles rocking back and forth during hurricanes.
At 18 David ran away to college to study biochemistry. …
David Mandel has been taking photographs since he was 13. His first camera was his father’s antique Kodak Autographic. It was hard to find film for it in his hometown, Port Arthur, Texas--the same oil refinery town from which both Janis Joplin and Robert Rauschenberg escaped. With that ancient camera, David photographed the family dog, neighbor kids, and telephone poles rocking back and forth during hurricanes.
At 18 David ran away to college to study biochemistry. Refusing to take a second year of calculus he eventually graduated with a degree in psychology and no future. Spending a year at the Art Institute of Boston David learned that he couldn’t draw a straight line or even an attractive jaggedly one. He grabbed his backpack and new 35mm camera to Yugoslavia, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, and India, where friendly people on the streets everywhere asked to be photographed. David learned much more about people, psychology, and photography on the streets than he could have anywhere else. That was 40-something years ago.
When David returned to the U.S., he obtained a MFA in photography, became a museum curator and has been curating history and art exhibits and photographing ever since. David now lives Nogal, New Mexico; a place where there are no crowds and no oil refineries. The air smells like air. The sky looks like sky. The sun illuminates and the elks bugle at night.
