Sublime
While the sublime can be understood as greatness, it can also be perceived in the grotesque. Each image is 40 inches square and displays the face of a teenage girl in the throes of an unknown activity. We can surmise that the activity is visceral, physical and extreme. Through the series, I am exploring female adolescence and athleticism, and the contradictions that still permeate our culture into the 21st century.
the unforeseen
In this work in progress, I am reviewing thousands of sports photos to find images that resonate not as successful action shots, but as something different. In this unintended state, their formal elements become their greatest strengths.
Lines
Photography is a two dimensional medium. Even in its most meaningful treatments, it is ultimately bound by formal constructs.
At the core of all my work, whether alternative, experimental, or traditional, lies an understanding of formalism. I have always been drawn to this approach - light and shadow, line and shape, space and composition. While meaning may still be present, the formal is most evident.
The images in this series represent my great appreciation of form, and the dichotomy photography exposes in our world – the juxtaposition of the simplistic and complex.
Fear
This series is an exploration into the forces that drive anxiety and vulnerability and therefore limit expression.
The Will is Not Enough
In this series, I mine images from my childhood in order to deconstruct memory and identity. Here, I am most interested in the impact of digital media on photography’s vernacular (the snapshot). By disrupting the veracity of the original document, I am reinforcing the subjectivity of memory and the representation of identity and the self.
Film Stills
I gather as many home movies (8mm, super 8 or 16mm) as I can find and then digitize them. In the process, I look for images that resonate with me either visually or through content. I capture stills from the scenes I find most compelling and the technique often creates artifacts or aberrations in the image. These imperfections from the process reinforce the irony of a vintage analog medium being transformed into a new digital version. Stills frames into motion into motion into still frames.
Untitled
These are ongoing projects. Some reflect examples of ideas and experiments I have archived and will return to later.
Portraits
the intimate, the immediate, the mobile
series received merit award in 2009 International Photography Awards
In this series, I am investigating the relationship of the ubiquitous and inconspicuous - the mobile phone - to the history of photography as a documentary medium. From the landscape to the portrait, to street photography and more, these images represent a small sample of the wide range of subjects I have captured on a handheld device.
student work
I have been teaching since 1998. These images are drawn from some of the best work my students have created during this time. They span nearly every school I have taught at and represent some of most compelling and creative ideas produced in response to assignments, discussions and critiques. A great many were created outside academic parameters, during individual explorations of the medium.