"Things happen in front of you. That's perhaps the most wonderful and mysterious aspect of photography."
-Annie Leibovitz
I was a writer first. All of my photographic work is partially a search for a visual equivalent to voice.
I am a regionalist only to the extent that where I am impels me to try to discover and express what being here means.
My central aesthetic concern that evolved from these photographs is the way tools/technology (like the shift from film to digital) can shape the artist’s imagination and vision and how the ability to interpret more freely results ultimately in a truer expression of the world. Each photograph is a fragment of the possible. I'm a little less certain all the time about the relationship between photography and reality.
I would like to thank my wife Mary for her support and willingness to stop for all these dang photos.
This Place on Earth: the Wyoming Images
This project began in the summer of 1990 and ended "officially" in August, 2002. I revised the portfolios in 2008. It is now, obviously, the never-ending project.
The completed series of black and white and color prints (currently 385 images) is an extended portrait of Wyoming as landscape, weather, habitat, artifact, history, icon, cultural assumptions, politics and propaganda, symbol, mystery, emotion, movement, spiritual fact...
...and, of course, it is about the SKY.
The organizing principle for the project was geographic: opening with photographs taken within 100 miles (more or less) of Casper (central Wyoming) and moving around the northwest/northeast and southwest/southeast quadrants of the state.
dix jours: France 2008
In June 2008 I spent 10 days in rural France, centered in Lafrançaise, a small village about 50 km north of Toulouse. One result is this gallery.
I don't have a profound aesthetic statement to make about these particular photographs. My intention is simply to share the beauty of this remarkable part of the world. I hope you enjoy them.
“C’est un truc français.”
I would also like to thank Pat and Patsy Medinger for letting me tourist through the French part of their lives, Johnnie Burton for her hospitality (comme d'habitude) and everyone who was polite enough to "pardon my French."
Beautiful Obsession: Santa Fe and the Southwest
Train wheels runnin' down an open track
in my memory time to take me back
are you goin'
are you goin'
to Santa Fe?
from "Santa Fe/Beautiful Obsession" by Van Morrison
The spirit of the Southwest has been a magnet for artists and photographers since the turn of the last century...I find myself always trying to get back there to the light, shadow, landscape, architecture and mix of cultures.
Alley Waltz: Behind, Between and Beneath
These photographs are about finding unexpected beauty in unexpected places. I stole the title "Alley Waltz" from a photo collage by my friend Steve Cotherman. I apologize...and for breaking your favorite record in 7th grade.
West Coast Blues: California Days
Plenty. Plethora. Myriad (William Faulkner's favorite word). California has so much...this collection shows some of it.
Stone and Blossom: Washington, DC
The title is taken from a line in "City of Monuments" by Muriel Rukeyser:
"...split by a tendril of revolt
stone cedes to blossom everywhere."
Sleepy Eye: Mexico and the Caribbean
"Americano got the sleepy eye..."-from "Mexico" by James Taylor
"In Antigua I am famous. I am bathed in jasmine and pressed with warm stones." -Carnival Cruise ad in the New Yorker
"...so you needn't let that slightly funny feeling you have from time to time about exploitation, oppression, domination develop into full-fledge unease, discomfort; you could ruin your holiday." -Jaimaca Kincaid
Locomotion: the Art of Transportation
I'm not a car guy. Most of my knowledge about hot rods and motorcycles comes from listening to Jan and Dean and the Beach Boys or watching Easy Rider. Although, when I was a senior in high school, I put some mag-type wheels covers on my '61 Chevy Biscayne until I hit a pothole and lost two of them in the first week. But I still recognize a sweet ride when I see one.
The first 70-some images in this gallery were taken over the course of several years at the annual Memorial Day "Cruisin' with the Oldies" car show in Casper. I love the owners who rev up their engines for 10 minutes at jet decibel level, then grin sheepishly at the spectators, "My wife wanted me to do that." I also love the guys with their kids who observe, "Man, we really it tore it up in one of these when I was in school."
It's not just about getting from Point A to Point B. It's about cool.
Before the Deluge: the Big Apple and the Big Easy
"...photography...is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as the precise organziation of forms which gives that event its proper expression."
-Henri-Cartier Bresson-
Bresson taught us the importance of the decisive moment in photography and we subsequently looked at photography differently. There are living moments that are just as decisive...nothing is unchanged afterwards. Significance and expression often lag behind...but we look at the world differently.
I'm not a documentary photographer or a photo journalist. These pairs of pre-9/11 and Katrina images from New York City and New Orleans are moments suspended among my visits to both cities, those two events and whatever it all means now.
Still Is Still Moving: Still Lifes
Inanimate subject matter (mostly)...natural (or not)...in an artificial setting. The Egyptians and Romans did 'em. The Dutch perfected 'em. Warhol's soup cans and Weston's peppers are both continuations in a tradition. Artists have cranked them out for a variety of reasons: arrangement, design, content, style, symbolism and allegory, simultaneously as a celebration of prosperity/luxury and as a didactic warning against gluttony. And as pure showing off: "How clever" or "Wow, I can almost feel that fur on my tongue."
I hope these affect you like that ubiquitous little "tug" in contemporary fashion photography. You know that something's been going on (or coming off in the next second)...even if you say to yourself (parenthetically)..."but I don't know what it is."
The Fall Lines: Chasing Autumn
"Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking successive autumns." -George Eliot
Coming Galleries
Nothing But A Burning Light
In the North Country Fair
Semana Santa:Travels in Spain
Botanicals
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