Artist Statement

Fog Across Tashmoo, Vineyard Haven, MA

Fog Across Tashmoo, Vineyard Haven, MA

My photographs are a personal response to what I discover as stimulating in otherwise common environments. A landscape or landscape element, a building façade or street scene will evoke a distinct and personal impression. This evocation can be the result of a play of light and shadow, shapes within shapes, textures, motion or most significantly, by associations and memories.

As a photographer, my objective is to translate what begins as a personal response to a visual experience into a photograph that transcends the particular and literal, and expresses something essentially universal.

I employ intuitive and learned processes in my work. Some of my photographs are made by combining multiple images. Others start with an initial image and are made by combining scans of various types of paper, fabric, metal or self-made materials. There is often a plan, but serendipity is always at play as the combinations, like memories and associations, interact. Some are made fairly quickly, others over a span of days as I work through my initial visualization toward a final expression.

I pay tribute to photographers of the Pictorialist movement and the Photo-Secession, while also invoking Paul Strand’s expectation that viewers engage photographs self-reflectively. And to Minor White who told photographers, "One should not only photograph things for what they are but for what else they are.”

Please see Statements about new work in each annual Field Gallery show portfolio.