Photography – Richard Sclove

Photography is one of my extracurricular activities. My uncle Mike taught me how to use my first camera – a plastic Kodak Brownie – when I was five years old. Today I use a pocket-size Canon PowerShot S120, a Nikon D7000, a Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra smartphone, and Photoshop.

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Photomontages – 2024 and after

I have been creating photomontages since the early 1970s, initially working with black & white images in a darkroom. I began using Photoshop to create simple montages in 2005. Then in 2024 I began to create much more complex photomontages.

These newer montages include a great deal of minute detail. You can see those details best if you view each montage enlarged on a laptop or, better yet, a large external monitor.

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Collapse and Rebirth

I began creating “Collapse and Rebirth” in the immediate aftermath of Donald Trump’s reelection as President. The montage combines several hundred images into a dreamscape reflecting my inner and outer worlds, personal and collective trauma, history and transcendence, catastrophe and hope, what is and what might be.

The montage incorporates collective traumas from the past two centuries (e.g., the U.S. Civil War, the war upon America’s indigenous civilizations, and the Holocaust) as well as my own personal trauma. Some of these traumatic events appear in the background (e.g., iconic photos of John F. Kennedy’s assassination and the Vietnam War). Other personal and collective traumas are encapsulated in bubbles that are floating way, symbolizing healing and releasing trauma. Juxtaposing MAGA’s assault on the Capitol and Elon Musk’s fascist salute with images from the Holocaust and an early-20^th-century lynching exposes some of the historical roots of the U.S. descent toward authoritarian government.

Click here for a key to the names of all the public figures marching in the foreground.

I discuss the montage at greater length in a Substack post.

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“Making Fascism Great Again”

I created “Making Fascism Great Again” several weeks after President Trump’s inauguration in Jan. 2025. At the time I was anticipating that the Supreme Court and Congressional Republicans would function as Donald Trump’s “enablers,” while unqualified loyalist appointees — like Kash Patel at the FBI, Pete Hegseth at the Pentagon, and Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence — would be leading “enforcers.” Unfortunately, as of July 2025 that is all coming to pass.

The people in the clown car are, left to right, Vladimir Putin, Elon Musk, Russell Vought (Trump’s rightwing-Christian-nationalist director of the Office of Management and Budget and a central architect of Project 2025), and Trump himself.

Over to the right are the Supreme Court’s Republican appointees. Justices Alito and Thomas are in bathing suits because I snapped their photos while they were cavorting with their billionaire benefactors. To their right are the current Republican Congressional leaders plus Senator Mitch McConnell, the master engineer of the Supreme Court’s rightwing majority.

Patel, Hegseth, and Gabbard appear as the heads of the dog Cerberus, the guardian of the underground in Greek mythology. Rightwing militias have so far played a smaller role as enforcers/intimidators than I had anticipated, but masked unidentified ICE agents have stepped in to fill that void.

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India Portfolio

I first traveled to India in 1979. Since 2006 my family and I have made five trips to India, including a year-long stay in an ashram/orphanage in Varanasi. Click here for a video of me discussing my India photographs. Click here and here for illustrated newsletters that I prepared for the ashram when I returned in 2011.

A wandering Hindu ascetic in Varanasi. He’s wrapped in a burial shroud taken from the public cremation grounds along the Ganges River.

Boats gathering in Varanasi to watch a nightly religious ceremony along the Ganges River bank.

The pink princess and her lady in waiting preparing to perform on stage. The occasion was the 2011 founding day celebration at Bal Ashram orphanage in Varanasi.

Children watching their peers sing and dance during Bal Ashram orphanage foundation day celebration, 2011.

A man worshipping at sunrise in the Ganges River, Varanasi.

Amit – a four-year-old recent arrival – meeting with two seated gurus and their attendants at Bal Ashram in Varanasi, India.

Some of the boys we lived with during our year at Bal Ashram. Suraj, Soham, Samyak, Ravi, Deepak, and Shiva.

Ravi, Amit, Santosh, Deepak and Soham playing at Bal Ashram in 2006. I visited them most recently in February 2018. They are still thriving as teenagers.

Boys sleeping at Bal Ashram in Varanasi.

Poling up the Ganges River, Varanasi, India

Sunrise over Mt Kanchunjunga in Sikkim, north India. Two weeks later my wife, daughter and I trekked more than half way up that 28,000 foot peak., the third highest in the world.

22,000-foot Mt. Pandim under moonlight, with our tent in the foreground. Sikkim, north India.

Cricket match outside Kalimpong monastery in Sikkim.

Young Tibetan Buddhist monks in a monastery school in Sikkim.

Moonrise during an overnight camel trek in the desert outside of Jaisalmer in Rajasthan, northwest India.

Children waving as we row down the Ganges River in Varanasi.

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Surreal and Art Portfolio

Al and Suzanne’s Scottish Highland cow, Montague, Massachusetts.

My 13-year-old and 52-year-old selves collaborate across 39 years to produce a combined self-portrait.

Tree in a meadow at Hampshire College – my alma mater – in Amherst, Massachusetts

Afternoon sun in Escalante Canyon, Utah.

One of the small ponds adjacent to Atkins reservoir in Shutesbury, Massachusetts.

Autumn sunset scene reflected in a rain puddle, Northampton, Massachusetts

Photo shoot in a Brooklyn schoolyard, 1973. This was before Photoshop. I made the composite in a darkroom, using two negatives.

The right to bare arms in Shutesbury, Massachusetts. Again, this isn’t Photoshop magic. It’s a single shot.

Anatomy of a Photo Shoot