I have a bond with Amsterdam that only a New Yorker can understand. For me, it became clear after reading "The Island at the Center of the World," by Russell Shorto. It was then that I realized that as a born and bred New Yorker, I’m Dutch, too.

How could it be otherwise? I was born in Breukelen, attended Erasmus Hall, the oldest high school in the city located across the street from the oldest Dutch Reformed church in the city, and lived my adult life in Albany, a Dutch trading post once known as Fort Orange.

In his description of how New Amsterdam became New York, Shorto re-writes history based on once lost documents now at the State Library in Albany, where Charles Gehring is translating them from the Old Dutch.

To those histories that placed England at the deepest tap root of New York and America’s beginnings, Shorto grafts a 17th century Dutch antecedent and reveals characters of sufficient humanity and individuality to make any modern New Yorker proud.

This is also the 400th year since Henry Hudson’s epic and (for him) hapless voyage on behalf of the Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie, the Dutch East India Company; a good enough reason to create a portfolio of photographs of Amsterdam and New York.

No visual similarity between the two was sought. That would be trite even if it could be done. But the cities are existentially related, and each presents the photographer with striking iconographic urban landscapes of unmistakable energy and beauty.

The photographs contained in this portfolio are generally available in sizes up to 13” X 19” for you to frame. For information about purchasing prints which are all created using archival HP inks, please contact me.