Regarding Bhutan

Before I went to Bhutan, I thought my trip was about witnessing the Bhutanese people’s transition from an agrarian Buddhist culture to a 21^st century Buddhist culture. I certainly saw red-robed monks with cell phones, farmers hauling fodder on their backs for their cows and prayer flags attached to phone towers. I also watched people wear traditional ghos and kiras, while others wear hoodies and jeans.

But ultimately, I realized what I wanted to see in Bhutan was the ordinary and the universal.  Regarding Bhutan is a photographic collection of people going about their lives – kids with money looking for treat down at the store, a shopkeeper waiting to go home, a monk teasing a younger monk.  My trip became about seeing new people in a new place with a different culture and searching for something familiar.

Terra Novus (New Land)

At the market, I pick each one up, pulled in by the shapes as they sit together, waiting. I feel its heft in my hand, enjoy the textures of the skin or peel, and begin to look closer and closer. The patterns on each individual surface marks them as distinct. I push further still, discovering territory unseen by the casual observer, a new land. I am like a satellite orbiting a distant planet, taking the first-ever images of this newly envisioned place.

This project started as an homage to Edward Weston’s Pepper No. 30  (I am, ironically, allergic to peppers). As I looked for my subject matter at the market, I found that I wasn’t drawn to just one single fruit or vegetable. There were so many choices, appealing to both hand and eye. I decided to print in black and white to help make the images visually more about the shapes, and not about guessing which fruit is smoothest, which vegetable is greenest.

While You Sleep

My project sprang from an Atelier conversation assignment in which we students were to choose an artist in whose work we were interested. Like many, I have been a long-time admirer of Todd Hido’s work. His lovely, lonely landscapes and night neighborhood scenes resonate deeply with me.

Inspired by his masterful photos, I attempted to recreate his night scenes and create a few of my own. I found trailer parks as well as rundown motels that did indeed delight. But one night, I didn’t really feel like lurking in a nearby neighborhood so I went to a nearby open field instead. I was hooked.  With frozen fingers and long exposures in the cold night came unexpected colors and surprises of headlights flying through my compositions. Watching clouds float by and constellations rise in the winter sky recalled a childhood fascination with astronomy.  Hearing the yipping of far-off coyotes and the sound of wind in owl wings above me felt like medicine.

My project, While You Sleep, has been my conduit for rediscovering the natural world and reviving the enchantment I felt when I first embarked on my journey in photography.

Lost in the Water

There was literally no where else to go. As a photographer, my world had been increasingly limited by my health. The natural world that I loved seemingly had turned into an enemy. As someone committed to the environment, I had always hoped my work could somehow help to protect our water. Turns out, I needed the water’s help much more than it needed mine.

I found a place where I could be close to the water, and yet safe from it and from pretty much any other potential threat. At first, I photographed it as I might a landscape, trying to capture the overall scene. That was interesting, but ultimately didn’t work. It was just too messy, a state of mind I couldn’t handle. I narrowed down my field of view over weeks and finally found a “zone.” I was lost. That was where I needed to be. The idea of being “lost in the water” tends to invoke a fear of drowning, which is understandable. I found just the opposite.

Silhouette

Until the appearance of color photography, people used to hand color black and white pictures to show “what they really see”. In this project, I took the reverse approach and asked because of the advent of color photography “what we do not see anymore”, what could only be expressed through black and white photography? Traditionally, Japanese culture has a minimalist aesthetic derived from Zen philosophy. This is the idea that too much information prevents us from seeing the essence of objects, ideas and the real beauty behind them. Through this project, I got rid of color, the models’ facial expressions and objects that would show the year the photo was taken in order to focus on capturing the nostalgic moments of ordinary people from different backgrounds. Through this project, staying true to Zen ideals, I tried to capture the essence and beauty of human beings laying beneath the surface.

Over Familiar

Along the road to my house there is a marsh. I pass by it everyday, but that’s all I did, pass by. Two years ago, with the marsh frozen over, I decided to fight through the brush, past the dead cattails and follow the paths cut out by the beavers to see what I could find. My efforts revealed a large clearing, one that was masked by the trees that line the roadside.

I began to wonder what else I was passing by each day that I had simply never found. And then I discovered drones.

I flew a drone over places I thought of as familiar, seeing them from a new perspective and revealing aspects I could never have otherwise noticed. I realized that as I became comfortable and developed a routine in a particular location I stopped investigating and started to take for granted the places I loved the most.

This project is my attempt to rectify this oversight in hopes of gaining a greater appreciation for the things that have become over familiar.

Depth Perception

The idea for this project was born when I first visited Yosemite National Park in 2013. In the years leading up to my visit, all I had seen were pictures on postcards, and I was a bit underwhelmed. All those who had been before, built up Yosemite’s lore in my head. It wasn’t until I got there and stood at the base of Half Dome that I understood how people felt.

I realized there was a feeling I got from physically being there, a feeling I couldn’t replicate from looking at postcards. From then on I searched for a way that I could share this feeling through photographs. While there is no substitute for seeing things with your own eyes, I believe I’ve gotten a little bit closer. I want these photos to be explored and to mimic this feeling, the feeling of stepping into the scene.

Le Quai des brumes (Port of Shadows)

The images in my series of portraits were created with a Film Noir mood and atmosphere inspired by movies such as “The Big Sleep” and “Double Indemnity” and “The Maltese Falcon”. The faces here were constructed by using dramatic light and shadow designed to express a sense of the mystery of that era.

I am also trying expose something that is essential to each subject’s personality… the essence of how they live, how they love, how their strength drives them; everyone has ever-changing moods and unique emotions, style, and grace. Bodies and faces that might not be perfect but are profoundly human. Coming out of the shadows brings a story to each image.

Extracts of the Ordinary

I am fascinated with odd and curious fragments of commonplace public spaces that normally go unnoticed.  Discovered through careful attention to the mundane, these vignettes occasionally appear when potential strangeness momentarily blossoms into juxtaposition and serendipity.

The top of a red ladder peeks into an abstract architectural tableau.  A puffy cloud forms a large hat on a small antenna. The shadow of an enormous flag peers down on an unsuspecting newspaper reader.

The ordinary, viewed through the lens of a particular imagination, can reveal unexpected outcomes.

Dispatches from Terra Incognita

Roman cartographers labeled unknown territory as “Terra Incognita.” In this photographic inquiry into the landscape, I find places and situations in the landscape that are often overlooked, but that emotionally resonate with me. These places sometimes feature a surreal human touch on the landscape, like a rock on the shore, covered with seaweed, and iron bars ascending from within. Or a grid constructed of stone, built onto the side of a cliff.

Concrete: A Skateboarder’s Canvas