ARTIST STATEMENT

Feelings of connectedness and ascendancy, anticipation and a little dread, unexpectedly come over me when I find myself in a certain type of place. I love, live for, these energizing feelings. Intuition determines if a given locale is special or just another vacant lot. The right place drives the tedium from my mind and sends me racing into a world of imagination and possibility. Vast, harsh deserts; dirt roads leading to unseen canyons; beautiful places that I know could also be dangerous, are like homing devices for me. The geographically remote is always inspiring (some of these inimitable places happen to be in my neighborhood, while others are in different hemispheres), but I seek more than the hard to reach—I need locations that help me to transcend the confines of time and deliver me to a state where the past coexists with the present, and fact and fiction become one. I may never have been to these spots before; and yet the psychic delight I experience results in a plethora of involuntary memories. My camera is the only means I have to document not just the place and its surface details, but the evocative emotions and sensations that overcome me.

Memory is crucial to my work, as is what I like to call the eco-tableau vivant, or the organic mise en scène. I view the world as a full-scale diorama framed by the rear window of a 1963 Chevy station wagon. As a child, speeding across the desert in the cool before sunrise, I concentrated on the blur of plants and rocks close to the car, the sublime rush of sand and sage. With a deep breath, I could taste (and still do when I’m shooting pictures), the dusty air blowing in the window. In the middle distance, cactus and dry riverbeds marched along, almost keeping pace with our car. A lizard darted under a bush as a hawk circled lazily overhead. Farthest out, the horizon was frozen in silhouette, dark and seductive, guarding secrets. When we stopped, I’d climb out of the car, walk into the desert and sit where I could touch the rocks and feel the emptiness. Ants labored to drag a dry leaf past my hand. I yearned to discover what was happening ahead and beyond my view, under the scorched soil, behind the mesquite trees. Were there places untouched by humans? Hallowed sites of worship or tragedy? Today, through my work, through a simple glass lens, I am granted access to the realm of the inexplicable, which is always beautiful, and where I feel insignificant yet powerful, connected, and wholly alive.

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