Fred studied art history at Middlebury College and photography at the Rhode Island School of Design, and was a professional photographer. A founding principal of Envision Corporation, Fred directed corporate communications media projects for Polaroid, The Boston Globe, Digital Equipment, Sheraton, and many others. Fred helped create Boston’s multimedia presentation bid to host the 1976 U.S. Bicentennial, which led to the landmark “Where’s Boston?”. Fred was Designer/Director of KentuckyShow! a multi screen and sound documentary theater experience (Fred is an Honorable Kentucky Colonel), Adirondack Passages for New York State, and media exhibits for Boston’s Old South Meeting House, Lowell National Historic Park, Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, Place Over Time-An Architectural History of Boston, and Odyssey at The Peabody Essex Museum. Fred was media exhibits producer for Cambridge Seven Associates’ Osaka Aquarium, Genoa Aquarium/World’s Fair, Tennessee Aquarium, and Lisbon Oceanario. As founding partner of A More Perfect Union, LLC, Fred co-produced the ground-breaking, innovative media exhibits of the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin Tercentenary traveling exposition, The Civil War Road Show double-wide truck exhibition which traversed Pennsylvania throughout the 150th Civil War anniversary, and the Hurricane Katrina exhibition at Louisiana State Museum. Fred updated media exhibits for The Buffalo Bill Museum in Cody, Wyoming and produced media experiences at Historic Newton’s restored Durant-Kenrick House Museum. Fred’s enthusiasm for finding creative, interpretive, exhibit solutions continues in Marblehead, Massachusetts; consulting, planning, designing and producing enlightening and memorable museum experiences with layers of content using innovative integrated media.

Only now, a bit late, because it seems proper since I have the time to contemplate, I recognize how much many of the artists and photographers that collaborated with me on projects or in association, taught me about humanity, in contrast to my design peers, who, for whatever reason, seemed to be compelled to posture about their accomplishments and their singular strengths, abilities way, and competences in relationship to other creative persons…many believing that nature is not at all perfect, and human beings are not either, and that therefore it was alright to alter them, even if they themselves could easily fall prey to their own gauge of righteousness. But luckily, there are a few who struggle to achieve an equilibrium with this common world of shortcomings, faults, and idiosyncrasies from whom we can learn.

This brings to mind Fred Brink, a photographer, with whom I collaborated. Fred was always looking for the uniqueness of the commoner and who celebrated all those things that we are too eager to discard so to be allowed into the longhouse of maturity, the Walhallas of success, and as proof of higher levels of sophistication. I can’t recall any collaboration between me as designer and Fred as artist/photographer that did not result in an extraordinary experience in achieving a very specific emotional high at its culmination. Beside his Artistry and Artisanry of his work as photographer, Fred is one of the most unique and keen observers of the innocence, kindness, but also frailty of the common man and his everyday experiences, which in analysis surpasses again and again the many sumptuous lives of the elite and privileged in the most simple ways: the pure enjoyment of an ice-cream cone or hotdog at Coney Island or the happy child’s joyous delight at a carousel joyride.

Through Fred I discovered nuances of human values, especially those unique to America, that my search for important axioms of life and for life never revealed. His seemed superior and became part of a foundation that he shared with the greats like Albert Schweitzer is super simple philosophy of “Reverence for Life”, that is so hard to achieve, because our whole Darwinian survival upbringing allows only for the outlasting all others as the fittest, but cares little for those left at the wayside. We never discussed this philosophical approach of recording human life. So I have always wondered if Fred had absorbed his father’s religious and philosophical world views—who, I believe, was a military Chaplin—most likely intuitively, in very organic ways, in which his regard for humanity’s bloom emerged. He brought to the task a gentle kind of humor, hard to describe—that could never be part of any back and thy slapping acknowledgement—but instead would automatically result in an uncontrollable, instantaneous, and understanding smile in response.

It has always been my thought that designers like me go for the extremes to assure immediate recognition, when in reality the person who is recalling an experience, can only respond in retrospect when there is a moment of recall, which reorganizes that the interpretation is constantly changing in order, sequence and dynamics in relationship to the emotions of the day. I think, this is Fred’s understanding of the value of the not so immediate, that is quickly forgotten and discarded. In many ways surrealism leads the way, allowing many possibilities, myriads of interpretations, taking time to establish a hierarchical value process, which enriches the observer/audience. Then there is also the “obvious” and the veiled. For example: showing “loneliness”, in an obviously crowded group by sharply separating the individual, is relatively easy. But showing the individual’s excruciating separation, is so much more difficult, when the person is physically overwhelmed by the extreme closeness, drowning by an overwhelming group.

At this point in time, I am looking back at many collaborate projects that I consider successful, especially because of Fred’s contribution in spirit and in efforts. If I even would try to call the projects my design, I would be an exaggerating liar. This is not how collaborations work. Projects may start with the idea of one, but quickly change into what I call the “What ifs”, namely, what if you put this concept on its head, warp it, mangle it, cut it up, and then construct a whole new concept. And Fred was always good at that. While I would go after constructing a formal design solution according to prevailing Central European design principles, Fred would look over my shoulder and with a funny throw-away line would recommend that what I was doing was pretty boring. With great appreciation I always looked forward to his criticisms. Of course there were always the struggles of convincing the clients of our solutions for their specific communication projects. Often the true guts of an image had to be adjusted…the dirty kid with the filthy fingers had to be cleaned up or when Hoover Dam had to be cleaned of the mess an aggressive seagull left on the wall…but what management never realized that for each of the multi-million dollar props we used in the photography to stress the exclusiveness of the project, it was Fred’s idea to enter very tiny images into each picture, like a moth into the $5,000 fur coat, or a group of skiers skiing down the lapels of a white jacket, or the postage stamp hiding in the mass of scales of a goldfish, the artificial tulip lamp in a bunch of same colored natural tulips, and my favorite: in the super expensive most advances circuitboard of its time, if one looks at it very closely, one can find a hotdog and bun, equal in size of an electronic component and two very tiny workmen moving a refrigerator, each time prompting the viewer to examine the images more closely for finding the hidden interlopers, thereby focusing on the quality of the printed image on the paper.

All I can say, I have never enjoyed collaborations as much as I did with Fred. Even today, I would drop anything to work with Fred and enjoy his very special sense of humor as well as his humanity.

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