Upfront, let's recognize the role of photography in the writer's -- any writer's -- bag of tricks, an acknowledgement you'd probably expect from a Rochester resident like me. Though not a professional (that is, not earning my living with the camera), I've photographed more than a few celebrities of our era and have correlated them into my manuscript of 101 ICONS.

Some of those immediately reproducible subjects are: Harry S. Truman, John F. Kennedy, Dwight S. Eisenhower, Pat and Richard Nixon, Nelson Rockefeller, Billy Graham, Jesse Jackson, peace activists Drs. Jerome and Carol Berrigan, Frank Sinatra Jr., Mark Russell, poet laureate Billy Collins, boxer Carmen Basilio, Clifton Fadiman, 1983 World Series winning Baltimore Orioles manager Joe Altobelli, and ex-Yankee shortstop Tony Kubek.

Four of those most recognizable figures are:

President Harry S. Truman, 1962, Canisius College

President Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1962, Syracuse

President John F. Kennedy, Pulaski Day, October 1962, Buffalo

President Richard M. Nixon

Other personages in negative/color-slide form as of now are Philip Berrigan, Mike Nichols, actor Robert Forster, Lady Bird Johnson, Father William ("The Exorcist") O'Malley, and his former "boss" Pope Paul VI.

Of his most recent color work, two of Sal's enlargements were displayed in the month-long January 2007 exhibit, "Animal Kingdom," at Rochester's George Eastman House of International Photography. One of those two is shown below, along with "China Dolls," a personal favorite of his taken near Times Square in February of 2006.

Spanish Master and His Human at Kodak Eastman House Exhibit

China Dolls

We never know where the power of print will lead us, do we?

Sal's book on nonverbal media, FILMS TOO GOOD FOR WORDS, resulted in his on-location consultancy with the World Health Organization (WHO) in Switzerland.

WHO hired Sal to work with an Argentinean artist and a British film-maker in designing a short language-free film to encourage Third World parents to bring their children in to WHO clinics for one-shot inoculation against diphtheria, pertussis (whooping cough), and tetanus.

Nor did his work end in Geneva, for he followed up that assignment with volunteer presentations of that film, to motivate health-and-audiovisual organizations in distributing that 1975 Yugoslavian production for pockets of poverty within the United States, helping to put an end to other childhood maladies in much the same manner as WHO eventually eliminated smallpox.