Photography Atelier

Returned to Life

I don’t accept a hard and fast line between the animate and inanimate world. Instead, I look for ways by which the inanimate can be reanimated with light and an unusual perspective. At a certain moment, light settles upon a salamander suspended in liquid, or a taxidermied bird catches the light through a bell jar. What was formerly so static and seemingly dead seconds ago may momentarily come alive. The object regains a sense of presence.

I make photographs because they are a way to make sense of the world. In some ways, I am exploring these once living things as a scientist might, making careful visual observations of surface and texture. But unlike a scientist, I want to arrange these objects in such a way that simple visual relationships reveal an aesthetic order to the world.

I start with an intuitive feeling about what might become visually compelling. I touch the objects, turn them over in my hands and watch how the light reveals what is there. Setting the objects down, I move them around, I place them in and around the containers and instruments of scientific discovery – glass jars, measuring paper, mirrors. Then I begin to imagine how a camera lens might further transform and amplify what is already there. At that point I set up the camera and begin working on taking the picture.

Fleeting Glimpses

My series Fleeting Glimpses honors departed friends who have come into my life for a time and then moved on.

My camera focuses briefly on its subject as the person moves across the field of vision. Only a small part is in focus; the rest is blurred and almost transparent, a metaphor for our friends’ presence in our lives. Some of the images, very abstract, are nearly impossible to decode, representing how hard it can be to make sense of what life is about.

I reference Sonia Delaunay in having a feeling of movement accented by bright, vivid color. In my work, as in Delaunay’s Orphism movement, light is decomposed and color influences an observer’s emotion.

Much of this color comes from the subjects’ bright workout clothes. When I made these images, I wanted color and movement to capture their feelings of joy and exhilaration as my way of expressing the happiness my friends have brought me.

Edible Geometry

ed·i·ble. adjective. fit to be eaten.
ge·om·e·try. noun. the shape and relative arrangement of the parts of something.

I am irresistibly drawn to fruits and vegetables. Not just for the wonderful food I love to eat, but for the shapes, the textures, the colors. Nature gives us a wonderful variety of plants during the growing season and the bounty springs out of my farm share box each week. By weeks end, these delights will be just a delicious memory. I use my camera to stop the leek on the way to the soup pot. The curl of the cabbage leaf stays with me, even as the season moves on to the next harvest.

Too Much Rum

Exploring the back alleys, beaches, we felt the heat and savored the Caribbean sun- the New England winter seemed so far away.

Using a pinhole camera and taking multiple exposures, I aimed to capture the vibrant hot island life. The classic colonial architecture provides structure for the blur of color, and the overlapping textures that enable the viewer to feel the air.

The colors were intoxicating and the music swirled… Was it the heat, or the rum?

Unsleeping

I am not a very good sleeper. I am always up too late and some nights I know that I am not going to get any sleep at all. On nights like these, I often choose someplace to visit at a time when most of the population is in bed and sleeping.

It could be a 500 mile round trip drive to photograph only a few frames, or a short commute to an empty downtown.

I’m drawn to places that are easier, maybe even less dangerous, to access before or after the rest of the world is paying attention—areas that I shouldn’t be wandering in or simply wouldn’t dare to unless I explore them in the off and empty hours. My destinations are usually devoid of people, there isn’t any traffic and I can park where I please.

The images in this series are records of 36 hour days, sometimes even longer. In many instances, staying awake allows me to see the front line of early light advancing on the emptiness, and it usually feels like it’s happening only for me.
In these moments it’s as if my surroundings are just a daydream setting that I am not quite sleepwalking through.

The photographs in Unsleeping were made during days in my life that have actually felt long enough.

A Case Of You

My sister died at the beginning of 2014 after a short illness. Her death was unexpected, but not surprising. For the previous 30 years, she had experienced mental health issues and related alcoholism. When she was 12, her Raggedy Ann doll began telling her that she was worthless and a bad person; around this time she started drinking.

My work here illustrates the difficult last eight years of her life. At holiday gatherings, she often exhibited quiet disconnection and unease due to some combination of paranoia, depression, alcohol and mind-clouding medication. She rarely went out in public. These photos show how small her world had become, a situation that, despite my family’s hopes, never improved.

Barns

The farm I grew up on is gone now. I learned how to see there: wheat swaying in the breeze, the many textures of the vegetable garden, a cow’s long eye lashes, aged wood, fences, trees and lots of rock. As I grew up, the urge to spread my wings, experience life, had a tighter hold on me than the farm did.

Photography for me stopped after the death of my mother and a dear friend, months apart. Deep in grief and ungrounded, I feared I wouldn’t be creating any new images for a long time. Then without being aware, I took a journey back to my roots, the landscape of my youth, photographing barns.

It all started with a snowy barn I had seen so many times before yet this time, I stopped and photographed it. Many more were to follow as I wandered through the farmlands of western New York, New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine. Wandering back roads and breathing in the familiar smells of my childhood I began to remember my stories, stories I rarely told. I came to realize that as much as I had strayed from my beginnings, the sensibilities that were formed there could lead me to the next chapter of my life.

By combining the many images I had made of barns and the story of my journey the Barn book came about. I present it as a homage to the gifts my parents gave me, the farm I grew up on and the vanishing landscape of my childhood.