This series began with a single image of Prince Charles, which struck a chord from my past as I noticed a strong resemblance between his smile and that of Alfred E. Newman of Mad Magazine fame. The elongated shape of the prince's head, however, needed some work to complete his transformation from an upper class, quasi-joke who seemed not to get "it" to the more sympathetic everyman persona whose of A.E.N. who didn't know what not getting "it" even meant. I saw that I could place his reshaped head almost anywhere, on any image, with results ranging from comic to poignant. At some point, needless to say, I tired of his singular expression and persona and came up with the idea of using my face instead of his, and thus was born the "HARLEY FAMILY."  I created these new faces by holding the SX70 with my right hand at arms length — cel-phone style — and lit my face with a flashlight held in my left hand.  The faces were than radically trimmed to create their clearly "normal otherness" appearance.

 Many people missed the central point of the work, thinking that these faces were meant to represent me, therefore making the work solely about me. While they are, to a limited extent about me, they are intended more to represent general expressions and reactions that people in their everyday life tend to censor. On the other hand, they (facial expressions) are central to how actors and especially comedians convey meaning. It was in the role, then, of the actor/comedian that I created these faces.

The resultant images in this series of work all depend on the interaction of a particular "Harley" face with the context of the image onto which it has been placed. In a very real way, I feel I created a transformation of a simple, or more aptly put, a casual photographic medium into a dramatic medium of sorts that was both everyday comical and absurd, the latter alluding to the more serious use of the word absurd as in Theater of the Absurd. I have not intended for these images to be taken as my photographs, or even just photographs, but rather, something else, something that involves a the process of scripting and/or re-scripting of something that is part of an actual narrative that I am intruding upon.  These images address how my mind works rather than how I think and work as a photographer.  Those familiar with photography will recognize some of the original photo sources such as Sander, Arbus, Steichen and many others. Most viewers will no doubt recognize many photo-journalistic images that are historically based.