russ_osterweil's photostream  

I was born and raised in New York City, in an intense and hard-core urban environment (think West Side Story without the singing and dancing). Making art was my inner world, my refuge. Before I ever had a camera I would walk around making mental "photographs" by blinking, as though I was triggering the shutter of a camera.

At age 13 I apprenticed with a photographer based at Long Island College Hospital in Brooklyn, accompanying my mentor to hospitals throughout the Metropolitan New York Area to photograph special medical cases. At 18 I had the great fortune to study “Psychological Portraiture” with renowned portrait photographer Philippe Halsman.

I dropped out of college twice in order to pursue an education and in 1994, after a number of careers, I devoted myself full time to photography.