Former educator and Peace Corps Volunteer, married 50+ years to Clara, a very, very special person who absolutely graces my life.

Now retired and moved from the Chicago area to the Appalachia Mountains . The mountains are our happy place.

Thank you for the 26,000,000+ views.

My interview with Great Big Photography World greatbigphotographyworld.com/richard-levine/

My PhotoVogue Italia portfolio

www.vogue.com/photovogue/photographers/31153

Administrator of the Little Select Gallery of Eclectic Visual Poetry www.flickr.com/groups/galleryofvisualpoetry/

"Bow thy heavens, O LORD, and come down: touch the mountains, and they shall smoke."

"The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of beauty is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, but indifference between life and death."

Elie Wiesel

"And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye." - the Little Prince

“Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.”

― C.S. Lewis

"Photography is art and art exists in emotion. There are no solely objective criteria for the evaluation of a photo. The cropping, the light, the composition and the technique are all important elements, but photography cannot be reduced to them. There are many photos created in line with the “rules of art” which – as the definition suggests – do not go beyond good craftsmanship. Photography has a soul too, one that affects each of us." - PhotoVogue Italia Editors

"The Editors look at each photo carefully and they decide if it is suitable for publication on Photo Vogue following the Vogue Italia aesthetics criteria, which are hard to write down, it is a matter of eye, of perception, of inspiration, not only technical perfection. As we wrote some days ago, photography is not mathematics, there is no formula or spell, it is a perfect mix of quality and emotion and the reaction in front of a picture of yours could be different." - PhotoVogue Italia Editors

"A good photograph needs to have a soul, be open, not provide answers but rather trigger questions, it needs to intrigue, have several layers." PhotoVogue Italia Editors

"Great photography is about depth of feeling, not depth of field." - Peter Adams

"A photograph which cannot arouse interest in anyone has missed its purpose and is valueless, no matter how technically well it may be executed." - Andreas Feininger.

"There are no rules for good photographs, there are only good photographs." - Ansel Adams

"The rules of composition are important, but the idea is to learn them and then break them." - William Albert Allard

“If I could tell the story in words, I wouldn't need to lug around a camera.” - Lewis Hine

"For me, photography is to suggest, not to insist or explain. - Gyula Halasz (Brassaï)

The simple things are also the most extraordinary things, and only the wise can see them. - Paulo Coelho

"I don't know what good composition is.... Sometimes for me composition has to do with a certain brightness or a certain coming to restness and other times it has to do with funny mistakes. There's a kind of rightness and wrongness and sometimes I like rightness and sometimes I like wrongness." - Diane Arbus

“The eyes are the mirror of the soul and reflect everything that seems to be hidden; and like a mirror, they also reflect the person looking into them." ― Paulo Coelho, Manuscript Found in Accra

“To me, photography is an art of observation. It’s about finding something interesting in an ordinary place… I’ve found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them.” - Elliott Erwitt

"A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you the less you know." - Diane Arbus

J.K. Rowling once wrote "No story lives unless someone wants to listen." The same applies to our images, as it can be said "No image lives unless someone wants to view it."

“You might as well ask an artist to explain his art, or ask a poet to explain his poem. It defeats the purpose. The meaning is only clear thorough the search.” - Rick Riordon

"When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than any talent for abstract, positive thinking." - Albert Einstein

“The whole point of taking pictures is so that you don’t have to explain things with words.” - Elliott Erwitt

"The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake." - Kurt Vonnegut

I was challenged in a letter from an excellent photographer that I follow who wrote: "I think you read too much into many of these photographs. It's simple. I take pictures of things that I like. That's it." My response was as follows:

Concerning "you read too much into many of these photographs", I hold that any photograph involves the photographer, the subject AND the viewer.

The viewer's "lens" of filtering an image through his/her own perception, experience and emotion is just as important as the lens a photographer used to capture an image of things he perceives he likes.

I personally agree with Vogue photo editors who wrote "A good photograph needs to have a soul, be open, not provide answers but rather trigger questions, it needs to intrigue, have several layers." Also agreeing with Henry David Thoreau in “The real question is not what you look at but what you see.”

As a viewer, I reserve the rights to be intrigued, to investigate different layers, to question and to see.

And, after all, wouldn't it be humdrum if everyone perceived exactly the same thing in every image, whether it be a photograph or some other piece of art?

p.s. Some amazing images are created by artificial intelligence. The problem is that a photographer did not capture them not an artist create them. Therefore I will tend to be indifferent to them.

Copyright Notice: All my images are copyright and All Rights Reserved. Please respect this.