All Here, All Now

Here, now is all we have. We bring all of our past to the present moment and within us is all of the potential for the future.

Our subjective experience of time is continuous and uniform, emerging from the past and flowing toward the future. But Einstein proved that time varies relative to the speed of light, slowing down or speeding up depending upon our own trajectory through space.  And Buddhists say time is cyclical, always repeating.  Some physicists even assert that, given the right conditions, time may flow backwards.

As a scientist, I line up with Einstein; spiritually, I feel kinship with Buddhism. Like all of us, I experience the forward flow of time’s arrow, rushing me all too fast into my future. But, as a photographer, I don’t have to choose sides. For me, the debate is both infinitely interesting and totally beside the point. Whatever we believe the nature of time to be, we have only the present moment in which to experience it. Living in that moment and capturing its essence in an image is reward enough.

These images and video are my way of communicating that we have only the present moment. We cannot relive the past and the future will never come. When and if we get there, it will be the present. All here, all now.

 Noble Waterfalls

Mother Earth’s life force

            Forceful, peaceful, eternal

                        Feeding her loved lands

Among my passions is seeking solitude within the shadows of waterfalls. This is where I feel intensely connected to Mother Nature; the rumble that resonates through the bedrock, the mist that permeates the atmosphere and the ethereal beauty of its flowing water contrasting with the ledge, which it has, over centuries, taken dominance and ownership cutting its distinctive path; all combine to connect me to her.

Noble are the presences of these cascades flowing among the flora and fauna. Mammals and birds drink from the basins below them and ferns, mosses and grasses draw sustenance from the mist-drenched stream banks. Because of this nobility, I’ve chosen to print these photographs with noble metals; platinum and palladium seem ideally suited for presenting these eternally majestic megaliths.

Respectful of their nobility, I pay loving attention at every step along the journey; hiking to their isolation, capturing their beauty with my lens, processing the image, and hand making the photographs. The ultimate respect is displaying these photographs on the wall for all to see.

It is my pleasure to share “Noble Waterfalls” with you.

Meliorations

There is a large body of evidence about the healing power of nature – physical, emotional, and spiritual. Whenever cracks creep through me, time spent in nature helps to patch them.

This series represents my wishful thinking about how to heal nature in return. Like many people, I am horrified by the damage we are collectively inflicting on our natural environment. My photos conjure precipitation during the California wildfire season, restore local songbirds, and strengthen a local barrier island. Each image is an apology to a landscape I love.

Somewhere in the Middle

After graduation from university, I left the Midwest to pursue employment on the East Coast. With time, I adapted to the Northeast but maintained connections to the culture and people “back home”. Until the election of 2016, I thought I knew the Midwest, and thus, myself.

But “post-Trump”, I felt so out of touch with the place enshrined in my heart. Upon retrospection, I realized that it had been decades since I traveled extensively in the US. There were many states to which I had never ventured; several in which I was fearful to travel. I started to see the outlines of my personal bubble and identity dissonance.

During the last two years, I have wound my way through 20,000 miles of small towns dotting state highways and rural routes in the traditionally defined Midwestern states. The scenes presented in this work are viewed through the eyes of a prodigal daughter who is gradually re-discovering her former home; a place that is, by turns, filled with quiet beauty, sorrow and history.

The question of the struggle between nature and the built environment is ever more central in urban life. In these images, relaxed beachgoers find themselves amidst carefully composed urban settings in front of dramatic skies. They are searching without seeming to find what they are looking for.  Peaceful moments of strolling along the beach or standing listening to the waves while choosing the perfect spot to sit down, are inevitably infused with tension and frustration. The beach becomes rising tides, threatening the very foundation of the city.

The clash of nature and city results in an absurd profusion of visual noise and little relief. The resulting images lay bare challenges to both my urban fantasy and to city planners, and the problematic nature of the future that lies ahead for humanity and the planet.

The Light You Left Behind

When I first moved my family here more than twenty years ago, I didn’t think we’d stay for long. It was too small – a cottage really – and the garden that surrounded it wild and unruly; but the light was lovely at any time of day and, because it was too tiny to ever be taken seriously, we coated every wall with daring, delicious colors.

It’s that light and those hues that jump up and down for my attention now. The kids are gone but, when the morning glow lands gently on soft curves and delicate textures, and the sunset blazes like a torch through the window panes, it’s as if it holds up one finger to my gasp: “Just wait a moment now, and look at this! There’s still so much more to see!” These images are an exploration of that magic, of a place that still has countless stories to tell, a place called home.

The Journey is the Destination

I miss maps.

There are so many wonderful technology innovations and conveniences that I have had the pleasure of enjoying, but paper maps remain beautifully simple to me.

This series of photographs represents my desire to preserve the sense of adventure and exploration I associate with maps.  To recall what it feels like to lay the whole geography down in front of me and trace the contours of the rivers, mountains and roads instead of confining my imagination to the GPS app on my screens.

I treasure the times when families took the scenic route while the kids flashed the peace sign out the back window of the station wagon and when college students went hiking with nothing but a backpack and map in hand.

These maps are frozen to preserve a sense of adventure in the everyday, to remember that the journey is the destination and to go slow and take the detours.

Self Portrait: 4 Seasons and 360-Degrees

A black hole is not a hole.  It is an object which appears empty because unlike the objects surrounding it, no light returns to us from its surface to make it visible. Similarly, the nadir of a spherical panorama only appears empty.

Traditionally, self-portraits are made with the help of a mirror or camera to enable the artist to depict themselves as you might see them if you walked into the intimacy of their studio and stood just feet away.  In a 360-degree photograph, the artist is at a distance of zero— looking outward, rotating on a single center of perspective.

For my clients, I always patch this nadir; and in doing so essentially erase myself from the scene. However, these images were made on my own time, captured during the travel between jobs. In these stolen moments, I pulled out of traffic and made a moment for me.

Printed here in portrait orientation, my globe becomes a map: all the information remains here, flattened.

Seeking the Invisible

It’s always been with a sense of curiosity that I have looked at the structure and patterns of objects in the natural world. These patterns convey life, energy and intrinsically thoughtful purpose.

But do these structures experience time as we do? Does a fallen leaf or a solitary bird provide comfort by reinforcing our perception of reality or are we all merely structures taking form to serve a temporary purpose? I am driven to capture images that attempt to trigger these questions by removing our experience of time and letting the observer explore within for answers.

Sand Patterns at Crane beach

I frequently walk the beach and dune paths at Crane Neck on Boston’s North Shore observing the unspoiled landscapes there. My responses to these scenes are very much affected by the season, weather, time of day and the behaviors of the creatures visiting or living there.

The natural forces of waves, tides, wind and rain, have a dramatic affect on the landscapes. Even though the physical elements in the environment are somewhat randomly shaped by these forces, I find shapes and forms that evoke familiar objects and past experiences.

This work presents an image reminiscent of the experience of observation, two images of static forms found in the sand and an image representing the dynamic nature of the environment.