Artist Statement
I'm interested in decay, breakdown, loss, as well as what’s hidden and overlooked. Much of my photography has explored those in the natural world, but over time the focus has expanded to other areas of erosion and loss as well. In common to all the work is a strong belief in the idea from film photography that the image has to be in the camera. I use no filters in making my photos — the colors and tones in them are the colors and tones in the moments the photos were taken — and I do little to no processing of the images afterwards. I'm more interested in what the world can reveal to me than what I can do to it.
I work mainly in series, many of them over several years. These include:
The Farthest Point Away [2022] - You reach a point when you’ve gone as far as time or will or desire allow and you have to turn back. That’s where these photos were taken: The moment of yearning towards the next beyond while preparing for return. These are photos of longing to me. A series of 25 images made over a single day, the last day of a week of near non-stop rain, and the last look from a shoreline I was soon to leave after months of travel. The sky and sea kept mixing and separating and reconfiguring and I’d lose track of which was which until the line reformed. It was all sea or all sky and I was part of it and couldn’t go. But then I did.
A Haunting [2022] - A forest of the lost. The ghosts of trees. I worked on these photos in the almost barren mountains and lava fields of southwestern Lanzarote. Because of its dryness, warmth, and intense winds, there are few trees on the island and those are often bent and stripped of leaves by the wind. Starting as an exploration of isolation, the series grew into a larger engagement with absence and loss, the sense of forests lost, trees never to grow coming to haunt me, as I thought of the drought and heat — conditions far worse than Lanzarote’s — spreading across the world. A memorial to what will never be.
Light Construction [2022 - ] - a series capturing the interplay of reflection and refraction, light and shadow in certain rooms. These may be the simplest and the most complex photos I’ve made. I call them Light Construction, but I don’t build anything. They’re constructions purely of light as it forms and moves. In a way, it’s the interior version of the sky/line series — in several meanings of the word, interior — focused more on contemplation.
Autumnal [2021] - created in the fall during a residency at Arteles Creative Center in rural Southern Finland, the series is a response to the light and landscape at that time of year — they're photos of darkened, withered plants (mostly weeds) from the forests of the region — but also to the autumn of life, what remains, what one leaves behind, a reflection of my inner landscape.
w(h)ither [2020], in response to the prolonged isolation of the first year of the pandemic, in late fall 2020, I shrank my focus to a single subject: a group of old, dried roses I had on my windowsill for years. Also inspired by Hilde Domin’s poem, “Nur eine Rose als Stütze,” whose last lines
Mir schwindelt. Ich schlafe nicht ein. (My head spins. I don’t fall asleep.
Meine Hand My hand
greift nach einem Halt und findet reaches out for support and finds
nur eine Rose als Stütze. only a rose to hold me.)
captured the disorientation of that time — the shrinking back and uncertainty of what was ahead — that the photos express
The Water [2019], taken in The Bahamas just days after Hurricane Dorian decimated its northern islands. Being in those waters at that time was like passing by, was literally passing by and through a graveyard. Wanting to recognize that circumstance and those dead is what led me to work on the photos while there. I see it as an elegy.
sky/line [2015 - 2018], initially, an attempt to capture where the light of the sky blends into the line of buildings seen from the windows where I live and work, the series developed into an deeper exploration of perception and place and the construction of memory — my only urban-related imagery, so far.
Memento [2015 - 2018], photos of jewelry and small items of personal value found among my mother's things in the months after she died. Started as a spontaneous emotional response to her passing, the series has become an expression of grief and a process of discovery and memorialization. Each item is fading into darkness, caught or nearly so in the process of slipping into memory. I'm trying to contain the feeling of holding onto and losing something at the same time, the fading and grasping for it
Littoral [2012 - 2017], taken early in the morning along the seashore north of San Diego, California, where my mother used to live, during the years she was ill until she passed away (and a year or so after), they capture patterns in the sand that emerge and disappear in response to the shifting water of the tide — there a few moments and with the next wave gone
de-composition [2010 - 2018] explores changes in common flowering houseplants — the plant life farthest from the natural world, yet often our closest contact with it — as they wither and decompose, revealing a deeper, wounded beauty in the process. Most of the flowers in this series are from plants I’ve grown on my own.
Last Woods [2008 - 2010], looking at the process of breakdown in the larger environment — the forests and wooded areas of the Northeastern U.S. Taken during extended, often day long, walks, the series brings attention to the intimate micro-changes at ground level, the decay of leaves and other ground cover, which echo and reflect greater transformations resulting from climate change
In their different ways, all the series are meditations on mortality and loss, what is there for us only briefly then gone for good.
The photographs on this site are a small sample of the work in the different series. All the photos are limited editions (usually of 5 - 12, a few of 20). Depending on the series, prints range in size from 12" x 16” to 36" x 48". Contact me for prices and more information.