Photography has always been like a game of hide-and-seek to me.  With my camera in hand I observe suspiciously; in search of the moment when all the elements surrounding me come together.  An admiration for beauty, peculiarity and the sublime, coupled with a desire to follow my intuition, are the inspirations that lead me to document and decode the world through the camera's lens.  I make an effort to create imagery that goes beyond literal translations of form, shape, texture and light.  While these are my visual triggers, my goal is that my documentations will allow one to see beyond the surface of the image and, on some level, evoke an emotional response.

I am a trained traditional darkroom photographer and to construct my vision the majority of my work involves such traditions.  Over time, however, I have developed an intense taste for processes that allow for serendipitous results to occur.  To accommodate my changing tastes I have fit my arsenal with "toy" cameras (my Holgas and Diana), antique cameras, Polaroid lifts and transfers, pinhole cameras and more recently, homemade cameras. 

For me, photography is a playful adventure that begins with truly seeing the world around us.

New Orleans
I instantly fell in love with New Orleans when we first visited in 2003. The food, the music, the complexity of the region and its infectious occupants are the reasons why we are continuously drawn back. 

In 2008 we returned, not having yet come back since Hurricane Katrina tore through the city.  One night, as we walked down Dauphine through Marigny and up the streets in Bywater it became apparent that two thirds of the houses were still unoccupied.  The streets were a ghostly calm.  Piles of debris, water lines etched into foundations, holes in attic walls and the spray painted doors and sidewalks made us all too aware of the impact the events that took place here nearly three years earlier had on this city and, more importantly, what had yet to be resolved in that time. 

For posterity, I felt compelled to document the fact that parts of the city, even in the most visited sections, had yet to be rebuilt.  However, I faced a dilemma.  I clearly could not bring myself to document all aspects of the damage brought on by Katrina.  I could not raise my camera and gather information regarding people's homes or the markings that recorded the details of its occupants.  Perhaps it is because, no matter how much the city means to me, it is not my own and therefore, it was not up to me to archive these details. Because of this, the series is a compellation of images that celebrates the cities spirit: its people, architecture and music.  However, within reason, it also contains a sampling of the decaying, forgotten pieces.  A bleak reminder of what took place here and evidence that there is still much to be done.   

Exuviate. To shed.
exuviate:   [ig-zoo-vee-eyt]  v. 1. to cast off by natural process. 2. To shed an old covering or condition preliminary to taking on a new one; molt. 3. to cast off or shed.

Landscape of A Childhood
When a photographic imprint is unattainable, recreating a memory proves to be a complex operation. One is left to rely on imprints in our mind to reassemble the residual pieces.  These pieces are no more than dim chromatic slivers, blurred visions and fragmented scraps.  One pieces these segments together to reestablish a poignant moment or a familiar space, but voids linger and slowly the memory vanishes.

This series developed from a desire to pull together all the remaining evidence of my youth.  I was compelled to done so, not only for posterity, but for the need to hold on to any residual consciousness from my past.  The architectural foundations that once protected me had already disappeared or transitioned beyond recognition therefore, I focused my evidence gathering on the unscathed landscape. 

With each return my comprehension of the region, save a few fields and decaying monuments, shifts as rapidly as the area collapses under the pressure of suburban sprawl.  Farmland and prairies have become marginalized plots of land as developers cultivate clean cut lawns, precisely aligned houses and discount superstores. In this area the shift from agricultural production to imported consumption has become overwhelmingly evident, and swiftly the natural resources that were once the inspiration to inhabit this land have been strangulated. 

Out of nostalgia for ample prairies and farmland, I wished to capture the vastness, the beauty and the serenity of open spaces before the expanding tentacles of concrete, vinyl siding and traffic lights have permeated the soil and drained all remaining vitality.  

Remnants
The Jesusita fire tore through thousands of acres in Santa Barbara in May of two thousand and nine.  Eighty percent of the Botanic Gardens in Mission Canyon were destroyed during the fire including the Gane House, a century old Craftsman-style home.  Merely one and a half months after the fire I visited the once lush gardens in order to pay witness to the devastation.  I constructed a homemade macro lens and attached it to my plastic camera in order to document, up close, what little flora remained.  I also wished to capture the birth of new vegetation that eagerly broke through ash covered ground.  I allowed light to pollute my film causing light flares to lap at my images such as the fire had done so a month and a half earlier.  

In my lifetime the gardens will never resemble how they existed prior to the fire.  
 

Specimens
Santa Barbara is truly a second home to me.  Like so many other natives, I have walked along the beach every morning taking in the fragile ecosystem.  With my plastic camera in hand, I documented the areas along the breakwater stemming from the harbor, always in search of the peculiar and the sublime.  I constructed a homemade macro lens, which I literally taped to my camera causing each passerby to question my intentions.  From there, I was able to get up close and personal with my surroundings in order to highlight the textures, color and smaller simplistic details that many people merely step over.  I leapt from boulder to boulder filling my film with the evidence of my adventures never knowing what my little plastic wonder would produce in the end.

Elston Avenue
Events in our lives can immediately change the way we go about our day.  When our routines shift we are approached with, and are forced to examine, new destinations and the routes that take us there.  The break in habitual processes reawakens the senses and we begin to experience again.

These studies focus on the detailed layering of lines, textures and colors that make up the decaying facades along the diagonal vein that feeds into the city of Chicago from a Northwest to Southeast direction.  These elements saturate my vision each day and I was compelled to share them, even if purely for their rough beauty.