Ronnie and John Together Again 50 Years Later in Marbella

Martin Stern and I went to Juan-Les-Pins together for a summer holiday, when I had a new MGB convertible - I did the driving and we had quite a time with girls we met, best not to say anymore! Many years later, I learned that Martin so enjoyed being in the South of France that he bought a place in Antibes and once retired spent a lot of time there. So, we too met up again in Orange, France.

But I remained happily, a confirmed bachelor for so many years, getting married at 29 was considered rather late in those days.


Award-Winning Photography

I was having an incredibly enjoyable time, there were quite a few special girlfriends, and I met some very attractive girls through my photography too. I met lots of people, by giving talks about my photography to various photographic societies.

No one knew how I was achieving my photographs on Kodachrome. I had the idea to photograph projected images, and I experimented by projecting images on to other objects, instead of a screen, then sometimes projecting more than one image with extra projectors to blend images. No one had done this before, but by using my technique it was not difficult to have a negative and a positive image on the same emulsion, which was considered impossible.

Of course, now with digital images and software like Photoshop anything can be done, but I was creating my pictures in the 1960's and using Kodachrome film, as I preferred to show them by projecting them on a large screen. Each time I finished a roll of film I had to wait about a week for the processing before I could see the transparencies!

Things got extremely exciting, when I won the International London Salon Trophy, which led to Kodak promoting one-man exhibitions and later to invite me to go to New York for an exhibition of my photography at Grand Central Station all at their cost. jncohen.net/photmagic

Thanks to E. J. Fancey (a film producer and distributor) who had seen my photography and wanted to know if my technique could be used with filming movies.

I knew him well and I explained why I could not guarantee it would work, as I was concerned about synchronizing the projector with the movie camera shutter.