It all started one night, about 10 years ago, while watching the HBO mini-series “Band of Brothers”. Steven thought to himself, though he had never set foot on the continent of Europe in his life, “I’d really like to visit the places where these men fought and photograph them”. The Necessary War photo project was born.

Steven began his career as a teacher in New York City after graduating SUNY Cortland. In 2011, while working toward his masters at Columbia Univ. Steven decided to pursue a business in sports photography while continuing to teach. He has been a photographer ever since, servicing the New York area, specializing in sports photography and editing. He has worked for such clients as Getty Images, New York Road Runners, Associated Press, Newsday, NHL, ESPN, USTA, Barclays Center, Brooklyn Nets, New York Islanders, Columbia Univ., Univ. of Pittsburgh, Penn State, St. Johns’ Univ. and Duke.

As the years passed, and dozens of history books were read, the idea to visit a handful of locations in Normandy, turned into a massive photo project where Steven would document as many important WWII related locations as possible. The more he read, the more interested in his own family history he became. In 1945, his grandmother, along with her sister and mother, were nearly taken from their home and sent to the extermination camp knows as Auschwitz-Birkenau, while living in Trieste, Italy. The reason was that they were Jewish and the Nazis had instituted a policy of extermination of all of Europe’s Jews. This was called “The Final Solution”. Bravery and cunningness by Steven’s great-grandmother to hide her children in a convent and disappear into the city during daylight is the only reason he or any of his family members exist today.

In 2018, after years of planning, he embarked on a 32-day photo journey across the continent of Europe, spanning 9 countries, photographing, battlefields, memorials, cemeteries, museums and concentrations camps. The trip sentimentally concluded in his Grandmothers hometown of Trieste and the San Saba Transit Camp where many of her relatives were deported to Auschwitz from.

While on this journey, Steven was touring a WWII location in England and was told about the importance of talking to our WWII veterans. It didn’t take long before the next part of this project was inspired. Steven would begin to photograph portraits of WWII veterans, Holocaust survivors, and home-front hero’s such as Rosie the Riveters to tell the stories of the places being photographed for this book.

Since starting this venture, Steven has taken portraits of, and interviewed more than 215 World War II veterans, survivors and Rosie’s, including the last two surviving Medal of Honor Recipients, Herschel "Woody" Williams and Charles Coolidge.

He look’s forward to completing this project and publishing the book to help memorialize and commemorate the stories not only of the veterans who have shared their story in this book but of the tens of millions who were never able to return home. Steven has one last venture before the book can be published and that is a journey to the Pacific, to tell the story of the sacrifice made by the veterans in that theater of war.