September 20 through October 29, 2023
Throughout my career as a photographer and educator, I have always made time to create personal images for myself. Sometimes, these moments or concepts come spontaneously and intuitively. Other times, they require scheduling and patience to fully manifest. Creating with my camera is as essential to my being as learning, nourishment, exercise, and love. I have been fortunate that my work has always required me to play and explore.
The photographs on display represent various portfolios of images that I have created over the past 40 years. Each portfolio explores a new journey of exploration and, when successful, reveals a genuine curiosity within me towards my surroundings that can be shared with a larger audience.
Using our physical world as a starting point, I engage in an internal debate about whether to simply capture or alter nature and man’s design. I consider whether to use the “photographic moment” as a launching pad to manipulate or restructure the space. I utilize line, tone, color, shape, and composition to express my observation of how things connect or fall apart. Light, or the absence of it, helps me define the subject and its value and scale. I isolate ordinary objects and transform them into the surreal. The focus of the lens, selection of aperture, shutter speed and isolated of detail force both me and the viewer to deviate from how our minds interpret what we see.
Being conscious of the rectangular and square format of my camera’s viewfinder, I constantly explore the elasticity of each image’s shape and its occupation of space when printed on various media. Throughout the entire process of capturing manipulation and printing, I maintain hope and joy in the ability to reveal something beyond the original capture. Whether presenting a single image or restructuring of space, I aim to evoke emotions and provoke reflection.
Teaching has consistently reminded me that there is always a new concept or image waiting to be explored. My mantra remains to keep everything simple and begin by photographing what is most familiar. The question that persists is how to best express myself in its presentation. Technique is only as valuable as the journey that accompanies consistent practice, experimentation, and exploration. Creating new images requires remaining open to all possibilities and stripping away preconceptions, working to maintain a sense of naivety. It is important to retain humility to bring to life what exists in my imagination. My “successful” images represent personal moments of insight into who I am and why I create.