Near Frenchtown, New Jersey, 1968

In April of 1968 I married Martha Eberbach, who is a painter, and we moved from Philadelphia to a rented farmhouse about six miles south of Frenchtown, New Jersey. Almost all of my photographs from this time until March of 1975 were made in or near the farm (and all of those in this gallery were made on the farm). The farmhouse sat in the middle of one hundred acres and with a half-mile driveway was totally secluded.The farmhouse sat just below the crest of a hill and I had views to the horizon in 270 degrees and to just above the horizon in the other 90.

The place was expansive, and because of the way the land and the forest were configured, it was totally secluded and the nearest neighbor was over a mile away. It was so private that I could have held a party there for 1,000 people and no one in the surrounding area would have known. This property, with its combination of expansiveness and privacy was so special that for the first seven-and-a half years I lived there, I was  away from home for only twenty days.

The first photographs I made there clearly have a documentary flavor