About My Work
Since childhood I have been taking pictures mentally or actually. I have always enjoyed working with cameras, and seeing the work of Adams, Weston and Galen Rowell. When I was17, National Geographic published my pictures documenting the International Boy Scout Jamboree in Manila. All my life I have worked on professional and personal photography projects.
I still do film work, but mainly use a digital camera, and I do my own printing. In looking at the world of photography today, I am reflecting on the process and meaning of my work. I focus on the creation of each single shot, as a kind of portrait. My photographs are conceptually structured by intuitive aesthetic values. I simply know what a particular picture could and should look like, and what I can do to get there. I construct a picture, mediating between my vision and what I see objectively. I start the process in darkness, looking, waiting (often getting cold waiting) until I see some combination of elements that enlivens me with possibility. I feel very lucky to be there at that special moment.
Of course, rational and irrational experiments are essential to both life and art. Irreverence keeps us pure enough, and wicked enough. Reformation is needed to remove the waste and clutter. But please don’t tell me that aesthetic art is dead, or should be! Beneath the sexy allure of contemporary cool or sensation is an underground river of life. And the soul follows the yearnings of that inner life. I live there, and beauty is my lifeline.
“To see the world in a grain of sand
And heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.” William Blake
Since childhood I have been taking pictures mentally or actually. I have always enjoyed working with cameras, and seeing the work of Adams, Weston and Galen Rowell. When I was17, National Geographic published my pictures documenting the International Boy Scout Jamboree in Manila. All my life I have worked on professional and personal photography projects.
I still do film work, but mainly use a digital camera, and I do my own printing. In looking at the world of photography today, I am reflecting on the process and meaning of my work. I focus on the creation of each single shot, as a kind of portrait. My photographs are conceptually structured by intuitive aesthetic values. I simply know what a particular picture could and should look like, and what I can do to get there. I construct a picture, mediating between my vision and what I see objectively. I start the process in darkness, looking, waiting (often getting cold waiting) until I see some combination of elements that enlivens me with possibility. I feel very lucky to be there at that special moment.
Of course, rational and irrational experiments are essential to both life and art. Irreverence keeps us pure enough, and wicked enough. Reformation is needed to remove the waste and clutter. But please don’t tell me that aesthetic art is dead, or should be! Beneath the sexy allure of contemporary cool or sensation is an underground river of life. And the soul follows the yearnings of that inner life. I live there, and beauty is my lifeline.
“To see the world in a grain of sand
And heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.” William Blake