In 1972 my friend Ron asked me to photograph him and his wife for their Christmas card and if I wished, he would photograph mine. So being a photography graduate student, I thought that I should have a gimmick. That turned out to be a plastic Santa Claus suit from Toys-R-Us for $3.27! The next year I did it again and then the next and the next . . . The themes are autobiographical, reflecting some pertinent event each year.

The first photos were 6x6cm medium format film. By 1988 the photo processors would only make Christmas cards from 35mm film. In the mid ’90s I was taking classes in digital photography and desktop publishing at Rochester Institute of Technology. Digital print on demand was in its infancy and I created my first digital card in 1997. From then on I have created the cards in Photoshop and printed them myself. Twenty Twenty-Two marks fifty years of cards.