The technological changes of the past 25 years, since the time I first set out to learn photography, have had profound impacts not just on the art form, but also with respect to how we live our lives. My work frequently explores the tension between the inspiration we draw from nature and the fundamentally destructive aspect of humanity’s presence. It expresses a set of aesthetic ideals informed by an exurban youth transposed to an urban adulthood, where magic is implicitly understood to course through the natural world.
Deer Sanctuary (Hidden Places #1)
I followed his tracks for hours and I was home again, for the first time in years.
Down by the water I had only just arrived when the crystal stillness transformed into an encompassing cacophany, as though plates were being smashed at a banquet of the gods. A thin sheet of ice had broken off, and was being carried by the current over the disused ferry landing that ran out into the river. I barely had time to throw down my tripod and set up my shot before the whole thing stopped and the world around me was as still and quiet as though I had not just seen a face of the divine.
Photography is a kind of magic, too.
It freezes a moment in time, and transforms our perspectives. I want people to see the world around us with awe and wonder. All you have to do is look closely enough, and something commonplace can appear as sublime as the vistas of some alien world. For many nights and days he searched through hedges and gardens until at last he found that magical sacred bloom, lotus of life.
"The Splendour of the Banal"
I found a family album by the side of the road in a pile of trash. Most of the pictures had been removed. This one caught my eye.
What is this place? Why was this photo taken? There is a date on the back which reads, "January 1938", but all the picture shows is a set of tracks in the snow, trees lining the background. What was so important about this picture that someone held onto it for 70 years? Presumably its owner had died and the sentimental context was lost to their surviving family. In the night sky, a star winks out.
Even this place is gone.
(Hidden Places #2)
Lost in the Mire
Passage to the Underworld (Hidden Places #3)
Traces (Hidden Places #4)
People are often confused that they cannot see this image clearly. It's meant to be expressive of the dissociative state that accompanies major depressive disorders, aka the Thousand-Yard Stare. The picture itself was taken from my bedroom window through a pinhole. It simultaneously evokes feelings of comfort, warmth & safety, as well as a sense of confinement and the frustration of not-quite being able to "see the world clearly".
