Who is Roger 'Mzungu' Moore
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Waco Moore © 2001 |
Roger
'Mzungu' Moore was born in a sod
house in the Texas Panhandle where nothing separated him from
the North Pole but a barbed wire fence. At age five, he was
stolen by gypsies and sold to a circus. He spent the next five
years carrying water to the elephants and running errands for
the tattooed man and the painted lady whose bodies were colorful
canvasses -- the original stimulus for Roger's interest in art.
After the circus got its big break and went to Paris, Roger ran
away to visit the Louvre. Overwhelmed by the museum's fabulous
artwork. Roger hid in the men's washroom and managed to live in
the Louvre for the next seven years where he studied many forms
of art and beauty. He subsisted on leftover food from the
museum's bistro and wore clothing left in unclaimed parcels.
During this time he acquired his first Hasselblad camera when a
tipsy Swedish art thief, being pursued by Interpol, stashed it
along with twenty rolls of unexposed film and a half-empty
bottle of DuBonnet in stall number five. Roger's destiny was
sealed. After exposing all the film, he mustered his courage and
left the museum to find a one-hour film processor. The rest is
history. His fame grew. He made a fortune and spent it on
photographic and computer equipment ... the rich and the famous
lined up to collect his photographic fine art. He sent money
home to the tattooed man and the painted lady, bought fancy
peanuts for the elephants and everyone lived happily ever after
.. (At least, it could have been like that).
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Who is this Roger 'Mzungu' Moore
... Really?
Perhaps, you should know something. In all my years; I have
ridden camels across the Thar Desert in India; pinstriped hot
rod cars; been Principal Investigator on two National Science
Foundation grants involving the design and use of what has now
evolved into the Internet; falsely impersonated the son of a
famous Southern Baptist Minister; have photographed a 1,900
year-old “house of ill repute” in Ephesus, Turkey, the city of
Antony and Cleopatra’s honeymoon; was the Information Systems
Officer to the Commanding General of the U S Army Medical
Service Corp in Washington; at one time thought a “duck-tail”
haircut was “cool” (and actually wore one); have been certified
in both Neurolinguistic Programming and Eriksonian Hypnosis;
have sold life insurance door-to-door; have won trophies drag
racing; have been married more than four exquisite decades to an
angel-on-earth; have taught basic business skills to students at
the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania; was the first
American ever seen by many villagers near the Amur River in the
Russia Far East; have led photo expeditions into the Amazon
jungle … and out again; never smoked pot (so I do not have to
claim that “I did not inhale”); have negotiated the construction
of hotels in Dubai and Sharja with an Arab group composed of the
Sheik of Kuwait and a Palestinian smuggler (they got the best of
that deal, by the way); played saxophone in a jazz band; wrecked
every car I ever owned when I was a teenager (and it was NEVER
my fault … I promise); have the most incredibly wonderful son
any man could imagine; a sweet and beautiful granddaughter named
Jette (no middle name, just Jette Moore), have taught computer
modeling and simulation to students at Texas Tech University;
with native guides, have hunted the Spectacled Caiman (Caiman
Crocodilus) in canoes, before midnight, on the Rio Negro of
Brazil; have photographed the bowels of the medinas of ancient
Moroccan cities; have designed and made boomerangs; have raced
motorcycles (and have the steel plates in my body to prove it);
have thrilled at the sensation of speed by windsurfing only
inches off the surface of the water; have written and published
numerous scholarly papers regarding the managerial economic
issues of computer networking; have fished for Piranha in the
Amazon river; have not yet skydived; have fly fished with my own
hand-tied flies; have broken multiple bones in the false belief
that I could be a martial arts master; have endured (and still
do endure) the surgical fusion of three of my vertebrae; have
made erotic nude photographs; have made nude photographs which
were not erotic; have written my last words with the lead from
the tip of a bullet when I believed I would not survive being
stranded with no food and no heat in a blizzard in the Colorado
Rockies; have fought mosquitoes in the Peruvian rain forest with
the man who trained our original 16 American Astronauts in
jungle survival; have marveled at the wonderfully muted colors
and textures and stone and wood that 1,500 years of life have
molded into what we know as “Aya Sofia” in Istanbul; have had
the honor of holding the hands of both my Mother and my Father
at their death beds as they left this world; have the belief
that I can become an accomplished Japanese Sumi-e painter; have
the honor of having people who seriously collect my photographic
works; have written poetry (and have the belief that I can learn
to express “negative space” in the form of Japanese Tanka
poems); drove a 15 year-old rust-bucket Suburban with
“blow-away-gray” paint simply because it fit like an old shoe;
have consumed gallons of honey-sweetened tea while haggling with
Kilim peddlers, incense hustlers, and turban-fabric hawkers in
such places as Marrakech, Casablanca, Fez, and Mekness; have
pumped gas and fixed flats in a service station (back when there
really was service) until I graduated from high school; was
fired from a high-level corporate management position
(apparently the Chairman of The Board didn’t understand who I
thought I was); survived a tasting of “Siete Raices” (7-Roots),
know as ‘jungle viagra’ served to me by a native Shaman in the
Peruvian Amazon; lost my heart to the beauty and humanity of the
people of the Russia Far East; was the best “bait caster” in
thirteen states when in the Boy Scouts; was an international
wheeler-dealer dealmaker during the boom days of real estate in
the ‘80’s (and have lived to tell about it); have been on more
diets than I can count; find Taoism intriguingly interesting;
have always believed that every woman is attractive in some way;
still don’t know what I want to do when I grow up; and so on …
and so on …
But,
I think you get the picture. I have been “down the river” a few
times in my life, and who would have thought that after all of
that, I would still have so much to learn? One of the more
important things I have discovered in this wonderful and varied
life of mine is that the things that have been most important to
me have come as a by-product of something I have done for
someone else. And, furthermore, the more the other person
feels what I have done for them was important to them, the
greater my personal pleasure.
(c)
Roger Moore All Rights Reserved
Roger "Mzungu" Moore (Explorers
Club, 2006)
with his mentor, H. Morgan Smith (Explorers Club, 1954)
Studying medicinal botanicals in the rainforest -
Amazon River - Peru - July, 2005
REAL WORLD EXPERIENCE --
My experience as a guide and leader comes not
just from books, but rather from many years of personal explorations worldwide.
I am an active member of The Explorers Club, an organization
founded in 1904, with President Teddy Roosevelt. Our members have
carried the Explorers Club Flag on many of the historical "Famous Firsts" of
world exploration such as: Robert Peary at the North Pole (1909), Roald
Amundsen at the South Pole (1911), Edmund Hillary at the summit of Mount Everest
(1953), Jacques Piccard and Don Walsh at the Marianas Trench, Greatest Ocean
Depth (1960), and Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins as the first
on the surface of the moon (1969). In addition, I am an active
member of the Adventurers Club of Chicago, an organization founded
in 1912. The Adventurers Club flag has been carried to the summit of Mount
Ararat and the Matterhorn, in the Amazon jungles and over the Humac Mountains
into Brazil from French Guiana, to Antarctica and the length of the Mackenzie
River to the Arctic, rivers of the Nile and Congo, river runs of the Grand Canyon
of the Colorado and El Sumidero Canyon of Mexico, to the "Lost World in
Venezuela", the jungles of New Guinea, outback in Australia, on small craft to
numerous islands of the Pacific and many other places. In other
words, you can feel comfortable and safe with me as your guide because I have
been "down the river" many times myself.
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Some people
have described Roger as follows:
Perhaps it's to be
expected that some of Roger Moore's memorable images are double
exposures. After all, he has lead a dual life. As a successful
financial consultant with Merrill Lynch, his many years of
experience in the quantitative world of business and finance
were brought to bear investing and managing money. However, this
largely left-brained activity has been balanced by an equal
interest and talent in photography.
While Roger's business
career developed as a result of his B.B.A. and M.B.A. degrees
from Texas Tech University, his Ph.D. work at the Wharton School
(University of Pa.), and his experience as a university
professor and management consultant, it is photography which has
provided his right-brained creative outlet. This versatile
Dallas-based photographer is as at home with his Horseman 4x5,
his Hasselblad, his Noblex panoramic, or his digital imaging
system, as he is with sophisticated financial products.
Roger left the
financial world in full-time pursuit of his passion for fine art
and commercial photography. Roger first set foot in a darkroom
when he was a military officer at the Pentagon in 1967. Now
Roger is as comfortable in his "digital darkroom" as he is in
his "chemical darkroom." Over the years, he has continued to
develop his "photographic eye" through scores of workshops,
seminars and personal study. He has studied at the Nikon School
and Hasselblad University. In 1994 and 1996, Roger studied fine
art photography with Joyce Tenneson, the respected New York
photographic artist, and in 1995, he studied with Greg Gorman,
the famous LA commercial photographer. His photographic printing
skills (chemical darkroom) have been refined through personal
study and through hands-on experience with Howard Bond, and John
Sexton, both of whom are world-renowned fine art photographers
and masters of the craft.
Many people who know
and love Roger's work refer to him as an artist. Roger's
photographic images are fresh and imaginative and his digital
imaging creations are innovative and unique. It has been said
that Roger is a master at "catching Mother Nature showing off."
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Artist's
Statement:
When people hear that
I am a photographer, the most common question I hear is: “Oh,
you take pictures?” To that question, my answer must be: “No,
I don’t take pictures.”
I
don’t "take" anything …………… I "make" photographs. To be more
precise, I record my reactions to the scene before me at a
particular moment in time. Then, after my film has been
developed and scanned, I further modify the representation of my
reactions in my digital darkroom. Every image I create is an
amalgam of my vision and my feelings, applied repeatedly over a
period of time in a variety of circumstances. My images are not
intended to document or represent that which can be seen by
one’s naked eye … the finished images are my personal
expression. To know my work is to know me.
I just make them, I
don’t explain them …
(c)
Roger Moore All Rights Reserved
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Roger's
photographic art is currently on exhibit, or has been exhibited
in the following venues:
Studio 105 --
Dallas, TX
The Dallas Museum
of Natural History --
Dallas, Texas
The Heard Natural
Science Museum and Wildlife Sanctuary -- McKinney, TX
The International
Cultural Center at Texas Tech University -- Lubbock, TX
The Gallery at
South Side on Lamar--
Dallas, TX
Focus Photographic
Gallery --
Carmel, CA
Montana Studio --
Santa Monica, CA
Linden Gallery at
Bergamot Station --
Santa Monica, CA
Coupralux
Gallery --
Dallas, TX
Beaudry
Gallery --
Dallas, TX
The Karen Mitchell
Frank Gallery --
Dallas, TX
The Quorum Gallery
--
Addison, TX
The Colonnade --
Addison, TX
Trammell Crow
Center —
Dallas, TX
Milo's Fine Art
Gallery—
Dallas, TX
Art Works Gallery
—
Richardson, TX
The Dallas
Arboretum —
Dallas, TX
Kathleen's Art
Cafe —
Dallas, TX
Red Dot Space —
San Antonio, TX
Palo Duro Canyon
Interpretive Center --
Canyon, TX
Untitled: A
Gallery —
Amarillo, TX
The Archive
Gallery —
Amarillo, TX
Renaissance Art
Studio —
Lubbock, TX
Ken Young Studio —
Lubbock, TX
The Old School
House Art Center --
Qualicum Beach, BC, Canada
Project X: Studio & Theater--
Dallas, TX
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Roger's
photographic art is in the following corporate collections
(as well as numerable Private Collections)
The Institute
For Luxury Home Marketing --
Dallas, TX
The Brookings
Institution —
Washington, DC
GTE
Corporation —
Dallas, TX
Northern
Telecom —
Los Colinas, TX
Real Trends
Inc. —
Dallas, TX
Service Asset
Management Co --
Dallas, TX
The Promotion
Network —
New York City
Fidelity
Investments —
Dallas, TX
Spectra
Communications —
Dallas, TX
South Side on
Lamar --
Dallas, TX
UBS-Paine
Webber --
Dallas, TX
Richard Wright
Architects --
Dallas, TX
A. G. Edwards
& Sons --
Dallas, TX
RealtyUSA --
Orchard Park, NY
Century 21 -
Bob Capes Realtors --
Columbia, SC
Coast River
Environmental --
Vancouver, BC, Canada
William E.
Woods & Co --
Virginia Beach, VA
Walking Angel
Records --
Dallas, TX
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