About the Artist
Jerry, aka Dok, was born in Brooklyn, NY and after graduating Columbia University in 1959, he moved west to Los Angeles in the spring of 1960. He was introduced to fine art photographer Robert Frank in 1964 and was Robert's camera assistant and production coordinator on the west coast shooting of the film Chappaqua. Robert then invited Jerry to come to New York and assist him on his film Me and My Brother featuring Peter and Julius Orlovsky and Allen Ginsburg. Robert, as friend and mentor, encouraged Jerry to think about photography not so much as pretty pictures but reflect on what his pictures were about.
Upon returning to Los Angeles in late spring of 1965, he and friend, Anton Greene, an artist and filmmaker, rented the old 46 acre Barham Ranch in the hills above Warner Bros. Studios. Over the next 7 to 8 years it became known as The Farm, a creative environment that was a notorious haven for actors, writers, musicians, artists, designers, filmmakers and poets. In the fall of 1966 he moved into a small cabin in Big Sur and emerged the next spring to work in production on the Monterey Pop Festival. Using The Farm as a home base, he traveled around the country and Europe photographing Art Happenings, Love-Ins, Anti-War demonstrations, and the Counter Culture of the late 60's and early 70's.
In the mid 70's he began shooting production stills and specialty photography on films and TV commercials for directors and cinematographers like Melvin Sokolsky, Tony Scott, Ridley Scott, Vilmos Zsigmond, Haskell Wexler, and Allen Daviau to name a few. In 1992 he was invited to be an associate professor of fine art photography at Woodbury University where he taught for 7 years.
Most recently, he has been photographing, printing fine art portraits and exhibiting large and medium format black and white abstract landscapes, shot mostly in the American Southwest and Scotland.
