Name: Steven Richman
Job: Partner at Duane Morris in Princeton, secretary of the New Jersey State Bar Foundation and new member of the New Jersey Law Journal’s editorial board .
 Age: 54
Hometown: Plainsboro

“I turned to photography as a serious avocation around 1997 or 1998, photographing the Hale-Bopp comet. Working with an old Olympus OM-1, that I taught myself to work, I developed a serious interest in photography. This included extensive reading as to technique and history of photography, and adult courses at Princeton High School. One of the interesting things about photography is its paradoxical juxtaposition of literalness and ambiguity. On one hand, it is literal because it is an exact capturing of the subject, and time and place. On the other hand, it is enigmatic because it raises all questions as to what happened just before and just after, and what was left out of the frame, and what the items in the frame mean when captured together. Photography leads you to speculate on the emotions involved in and evoked by the image. In many ways, photography is visual poetry, particularly a haiku with the presentation of often conflicting or unrelated items that create a tension in the scene. Good photography therefore becomes metaphoric, suggesting meanings apart from the literal presentation of facts. Because of photography, I look at the world in a particularized way: Everything is an image within a frame. I think about what resonates and what doesn’t, and what the deeper meanings are of particular moments and scenes. By viewing people for what may be beneath the surface, and understanding the subjects you are photographing, you tend to become more compassionate and understanding. For this reason, usually on weekends and business trips, I keep the camera handy because one never knows what will present itself. And for that reason, I find urban photography the most intriguing.”


This article was produced by the New Jersey State Bar Association for publication in the New Jersey Law Journal.