A Quiet Confidence – New York Master photographer: John Dugdale
–Words and Interview by Robbie Sosa with New York master photographer John Dugdale . Image: A Turbulent Dream – 1996 – All images courtesy of Holden Luntz gallery. It’s 1992 and fear has cast its unending shadow over the gay community in New York City. Reeling from a mysterious illness, a thirty year-old named John Patrick Dugdale lies on a metal bed in a cold and drafty hospital room. From afar, the scene is straight out of war-torn Beirut – but this battle is taking place inside Manhattan’s St. Vincent Hospital. Dugdale is not alone, for there are dozens of other young, frail men on the frontlines of death. It’s a dark moment for a city wrapped in the clenched fist of a virus called HIV/AIDS. This is where Dugdale’s journey to triumph begins to become one of New York most prominent master photographers. Born in 1960 in the working class suburban town of Stamford, Connecticut, Dugdale dreamed of an artist’s life, “I thought of myself as being born in the wagon of a traveling van, just …