Artist statement:

 

The contents of this website are a selection of photographs that I have made

since the mid 70,s. There are two separate bodies of work. The early work is

b&w photography, and deals with non traditional cultural expression. The later

work deals with the abstract landscape at the oceans edge.

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The snake handler rituals were my first photography venture. I entered into a

surreal world where people drank strychnine and handled poison snakes. When

the preacher began to speak everything moved at a fast pace there wasn’t time

to contemplate the image composition I had to react spontaneously to shoot

and dodge the other snakes. Often in the darkroom I would see these raw

pictures I had just developed differently than what I remembered seeing in

person. I learned to go with the flow and trust my instincts. One night after

about a year of photographing the rituals the preacher was bit in the abdomen

by a diamond back rattlesnake and died. That fatal incident ended the project

when the police became involved.

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Since that time I have photographed people in their natural habitat. I’m drawn

to the cultural kind of the portraiture that evokes the natural expressions of the

people. The magic of the cameras to capture a fleeting moment that does not

consciously register at the time of exposure. This intrigues me as much today as

it did the first time I experienced it. I concentrated on this genre of documentary

photography until around 2010 when I lived in a wilderness at the foothills of the

smoky mountains where I experienced an environment that closely surrounded

me, there were few people. I began to look at the landscape up close. Crossing

from normally perceived perception to the image perceived through instinct

rather than relatable reality.

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In 2015 I moved to Tybee Island Georgia and began photographing the ever

changing sea/land relationship. Every time I go look at the waters edge the

topography of the landscape it will have changed from the time before. It looks

like a different place, the same concept as in the forest but where the changes

happen less often.

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These photographs are an abstraction of reality that cross from normal

perception to the imaginable. Some emerged as mirrored images that give the

viewer the sensation of the picture looking back at the viewer like a looking

glass, a bridge to the primal recognition of the subconscious.