GFT Publishing - Anderson's My Place

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I was born and grew up in Lincoln, Nebraska, at the intersection of the Middle West and Great Plains. But my life changed when a teacher at my high school in Faribault, Minnesota, helped me to arrange a meeting with Alfred Eisenstaedt in his office at Life magazine in New York City to show him some of my photographs. I was seventeen, just about to turn eighteen.

I explained to Mr. Eisenstaedt that I had been offered a job as a copyboy at the New York Daily News through an uncle of mine who lived in the area. Mr. Eisenstaedt seemed to like my photos and said, "You would be a fool not to work at the Daily News." Within a month after graduating from high school, I was working at the Daily News from 6 p.m. to 2 a.m.

That encounter, or fateful meeting, with Mr. Eisenstaedt engendered a commitment for me not only to photography and cinematography, but also to New York City. Except for a tour of duty as a cameraman in the U.S. Army, including time in Vietnam, I lived in Manhattan for fifty years before retiring to the Hudson River valley in upstate New York in 2010.

When I was living in New York City, I wanted to get away from the concrete canyons for a while. Thankfully, I lived but a few blocks from Central Park and tried to go there every day. Sometimes I would be inspired to photograph a monument or building or some other human-made object. In walking by these sites so many times, I became aware as to when would be the best time of day to photograph them during any particular weather or season. Spending that kind of time in the green park was important to me.

Now that I live in the bucolic country north of the city, I still make and find the time to become immersed in my surroundings. And, dutifully, I continue to take my camera along with me on my walks.