For one week every summer, my family rents a small cabin overlooking the harbor in Wellfleet, MA. The “little house” came to us as a prize at a preschool auction. Twenty years later, it is entwined with my memory of summer, children growing up, and friends gathering.

As a photographer, I focus on portraits and how personal narratives reveal our common human experience. As I tried to capture the “little house,” I realized that these portraits of small details capture my own narrative. A jar of mismatched forks, a chair by an open window, towels drying on the clothesline; in these tableaus, unchanged over many years, I see myself, my family, and my friends.

 

Illusions (Landscape)
While our eyes may tell us one thing, our analytical brain often can’t quite figure what we are seeing. Something just doesn’t make sense. What we see and what we perceive and interpret may not be the physical reality.

The series Illusions (Landscape) plays with our visual perception. The images remind of landscapes, but on closer examination, something is off. What is that texture? The colors aren’t quite right. Photographs of two-dimensional flat concrete surfaces can be perceived as three-dimensional landscapes. In the changing light of day, colors and shadows emerge, reminding of dawn and dusk, imagined rivers, shadowed trees reflected in lakes, insects rising to the sky.

Perceptual ambiguity reflects ambiguity in life.

Ephemeral Abstractions
In this year of the pandemic, we were forced to stay inside and look inward, often in solitude. Our daily routines and habits were upended. Physical and virtual realities merged. Time itself seemed to change.

In this project I experimented with ephemeral elements in nature to create abstract images meant to ask myself questions regarding the perception of time and place. The objects I chose to photograph – ice, frost, spider webs, milkweed pods – all are perceived to be impermanent. I found everything close to home and yet they managed to transport me to imaginary landscapes far away.

I use symmetry as a way to convey change and transformation. Capturing these fleeting moments allowed me to appreciate the beauty of impermanence at my own pace.