I am a 20th century kind of photographer. My work is informed by mid century documentary and reportage work in the vein of Cornell Capa’s “Concerned Photographers”, a more freewheeling kind of street photography, and the works of the New York School of abstract expressionist painting. To me there is a very definite connection between action painting and street photography… At 125th or 250th of a second there isn’t the time for guile. You see and react, and while that’s always influenced by the way you’ve thought about photography and the world around you, that fleeting moment is in a way a window into your subconscious.
I suppose given that, my images reveal a concern for people. Scenes of ordinary people in ordinary situations feel more important to me then the tyranny of “grand moments”. It’s in these tiny moments where life is lived and I try to capture them with the humor, dignity, romance and nostalgia they deserve. The greatest grace can be found in the moments lost to memory, and in that, perhaps even a sense of yearning for those moments lost to my own memory come through.
What may be more difficult to decode are my abstract works. These are like pure expression. Using only the basic rules of visual composition, and allusions to the works of the master abstract painters I have grown to love, I try to refine my visual tastes in an environment devoid of explicit representation… it’s kind of like pure research with a personal subtext of allegory that I keep for myself. They belong as much to the viewer as myself and are open to interpretation… like seeing faces in clouds or mythology in the stars. They just are.
Documenting the contemporary in traditional ways means that craftwork and process are fundamental to my vision. My work is primarily analog, with all images captured on film. The importance of the materials used are not only in service to the kind of aesthetic that best describes me, but also take on a more personal nature to my photography. The final piece is of critical importance not only because I put a premium on the fine finished print, but also, and no less importantly, because it is the document of the creative process. I choose a film stock to match the various chemicals I use to develop. The manner in which I develop also plays into that as well as the kind of optic I choose, paper, paper developer, bleach, toning… temperature and time… all of these various techniques are in service to craft a particular mood to whatever particular image I take. What’s behind the lens is at least as important as what is before it. If you believe as Ansel Adams once said that the negative is the score and the print is the performance, than what you are left with is the recording of that performance. Through that performance the score reveals what it is, and what it can be, with the space offered for improvisation and interpretation… in that regard I can be transformed by the image as much as I can transform it myself. It’s a living thing. There is a hand made, alchemical intimacy that happens with the cultivation of a print, literally as in the transformation of base salts into refined metals, but also allegorically as in the refining of myself through the work. That’s also why I number but never edition my silver work. Print 5 might be very similar to print 8 but can be wildly different to print 18. Eventually my goal is to track a path in my skill, tastes and evolution as an artist and printer in those numbers. I could never bound myself into the uniformity of an edition… when I die that’ll be the scope of the print.
I suppose given that, my images reveal a concern for people. Scenes of ordinary people in ordinary situations feel more important to me then the tyranny of “grand moments”. It’s in these tiny moments where life is lived and I try to capture them with the humor, dignity, romance and nostalgia they deserve. The greatest grace can be found in the moments lost to memory, and in that, perhaps even a sense of yearning for those moments lost to my own memory come through.
What may be more difficult to decode are my abstract works. These are like pure expression. Using only the basic rules of visual composition, and allusions to the works of the master abstract painters I have grown to love, I try to refine my visual tastes in an environment devoid of explicit representation… it’s kind of like pure research with a personal subtext of allegory that I keep for myself. They belong as much to the viewer as myself and are open to interpretation… like seeing faces in clouds or mythology in the stars. They just are.
Documenting the contemporary in traditional ways means that craftwork and process are fundamental to my vision. My work is primarily analog, with all images captured on film. The importance of the materials used are not only in service to the kind of aesthetic that best describes me, but also take on a more personal nature to my photography. The final piece is of critical importance not only because I put a premium on the fine finished print, but also, and no less importantly, because it is the document of the creative process. I choose a film stock to match the various chemicals I use to develop. The manner in which I develop also plays into that as well as the kind of optic I choose, paper, paper developer, bleach, toning… temperature and time… all of these various techniques are in service to craft a particular mood to whatever particular image I take. What’s behind the lens is at least as important as what is before it. If you believe as Ansel Adams once said that the negative is the score and the print is the performance, than what you are left with is the recording of that performance. Through that performance the score reveals what it is, and what it can be, with the space offered for improvisation and interpretation… in that regard I can be transformed by the image as much as I can transform it myself. It’s a living thing. There is a hand made, alchemical intimacy that happens with the cultivation of a print, literally as in the transformation of base salts into refined metals, but also allegorically as in the refining of myself through the work. That’s also why I number but never edition my silver work. Print 5 might be very similar to print 8 but can be wildly different to print 18. Eventually my goal is to track a path in my skill, tastes and evolution as an artist and printer in those numbers. I could never bound myself into the uniformity of an edition… when I die that’ll be the scope of the print.