ARTIST STATEMENT: IN A BIG WORLD WANDERING
This series is about searching for identity in a world where we are increasingly isolated from nature, culture, and community. How do we find our way when we have more choices than ever before, but our roles are less clear? How malleable are the memories we stitch together into our personal narratives?
I try to make photographs that appear remembered rather than observed: images that are often playful, sometimes haunting, and always soaked in ambiguity. I whisper a line from the middle of a story, and let you conjure up the rest. My work is open to interpretation, yet rooted in my personal journey. Years ago my wife (the figure in the photos) and I left our jobs to pursue our passions together. The years since have been filled with tremendous freedom, joy, and satisfaction, along with sizable doses of hardship, fear, frustration, and failure. My work has become about finding our way and persisting despite a nagging angst. It’s about accepting ambiguity, climbing past our own insignificance, and finding wonder on the other side.
I create my images in-camera on film, using vintage and homemade equipment without digital compositing or manipulation. I print in platinum/palladium on handmade Japanese tissue, yielding delicate, translucent prints that seem like visions on the edge of being grasped, reinterpreted, or forgotten. I make them for those who, in this virtual age, long to commune quietly with a genuine object in hand.