Donald Greenhaus

I got into photography chasing a ghost – my father’s. My initial love of photography came from him and his love for photography. When my father died, they had a hard time deciding what to put on his gravestone. My brother Edwin said, “He loved his camera. Why don’t we put that on it.” So my mother had a Speed Graphic carved on my father’s gravestone.

I actually don’t know how early I began. I do know that I was four years old and I started drawing and painting. Anyone wanting me would know to follow the crayon marks on the walls and furniture until they found me covered with color, happily lost in my reverie. When I was nine years old, my father died. He was 42 years old. He was a photographer with The New York Times. His last camera was my first camera, but it will always be “my father’s camera”. I picked up his camera (an old 4×5 Speed Graphic with a broken range finder), stopped drawing, and started making photographs. From the very beginning, it was the most exciting experience I had ever felt, both scary and exhilarating at the same time.

My driving force was a combination of love and rage. As the years went by, the rage was replaced by sadness. Most of my early work and life speak of these things. Of the human condition, of the nobility of the human spirit. Now the sadness has been replaced by joy and the darkness transformed into light. I ran as fast and as hard as I could – sometimes from, other times to. Most times not knowing where. But always making photographs.

My work still speaks of the human condition, only this time I’m speaking about me – my human condition. No matter what else I was working on or doing, it seemed as if I was always doing my photographs, seeing my life through my own eyes. Eyes that have a particular vision, a vision that uses colors from the palette of my own sensibilities, thoughts and emotions – sometimes fear, sometimes ecstasy, sometimes who knows what. My photographs are about my feelings, from living my life and seeing my world as if I were running past it in a dream, walking down the street so spaced out not knowing whether it’s night or day, looking at something so hard and so long that I didn’t see it anymore, standing in the sun and feeling the warmth of the sun all over me. I am seeing my feelings and my thoughts outside of myself.

For the last 30 years or so my work has been thousands of rolls of film sitting in shoe boxes stashed all around my loft. Every once in a while I would develop a roll or two, make a print, go back to my other work. Finally, in 1996, I developed the film and rebuilt my darkroom, and I’m now starting to print these negatives. This is an ongoing process – shooting, developing, printing, and building. I have hundreds of thousands of negatives and every day I’m making more. Being an artist is a way of life. A way of being – being alive. I am working on something I call “Conversations With Trane” – exchanges that are ongoing between John Coltrane’s music and me. Also another piece I call “Prayers”.

I turned 63 years old in December 2004 and I’ve been making photographs for 55 years. I’m still learning and growing. My work is because I am, and that’s what it’s about – a celebration of life. When I was a kid and I made my first photograph, I got so excited my feet didn’t touch the ground for days. Now my love, passion, understanding, and commitment are stronger and more exciting than ever. My work is my statement. I wake up each morning very grateful that I have another day to do my work.

“I Look into the Mirror and See My Father’s Face”

My father died in May of 1951. He was 42 and I was 9 years old. I speak more with him now than before he died.

I knew my father was not there anymore, but I didn’t know why. The only knowledge of him that I had growing up was his photographs – his camera and other peoples’ memories.

The last year of my father’s life, he was a room that I had to walk quietly past. He went into the hospital and I never saw him again. And then his room became my room. My first camera was his last camera but will always be “my father’s camera.” I have no memories of my father. I don’t remember if we ever walked together or laughed or cried together. I know that he loved photography.

When I was 50, I had a dream – l dreamt that there was a baby in a playpen. A pair of arms came down from the sky and picked up the baby, hugged him and swung the baby around and around. The baby (arms and legs waving and kicking) was laughing and giggling and screaming with joy. At first I thought the arms were God’s arms. I knew the baby was me, but then I looked up and instead of God, I saw my father’s face. I know he loved me.

I forgive my father for dying.

I forgive myself for thinking that he abandoned me.

I spent a lot of years being angry and feeling lost. I found myself, and in finding myself, I found my father. I spent a lot of years regretting that I didn’t know him and he didn’t know me. Blocking out whatever memory that I had of him because it was too painful – Trying to separate myself from him and him from me – Finding out where he ended and I began – Denying each from the other. ln blocking out the pain, I blocked out the good as well. I spent so many years of my life blocking out, fighting the pain and trauma of his death, that I didn’t see anything else.

I know that it doesn’t matter anymore. Now instead of the pain I choose to feel only the joy. My father – not his death – was and is a great and constant inspiration for me. I’ve had him with me all these years and l just realized it. He’s always with me. We walk and talk and cry and laugh together.