‘Equipoise’
archival inkjet print
36″ x 48″
2005
‘Transplant’
archival inkjet print
27″ x 36″
2005
‘The Playground’
archival inkjet print
30″ x 36″
2006
‘The Consummation’
archival inkjet print
28″ x 38″
2005
‘The Library’
archival inkjet print
38″ x 27″
2005
‘The Audience’
archival inkjet print
36″ x 30″
2004
“We often say, photographs “capture” time. But to capture something is not to understand it, because in the act of capture the thing is changed. Family albums, travel photographs- what they do with time is give it boundaries. They make memory possible by giving it shape. They describe an event or a place as if in the absence of time, as if time does not exist.” Chris Engman
Much of my recent work takes place in the desert at a site in eastern Washington that I found two years ago and has by its gravity kept me going back. The place, for me, has a psychologically charged but neutral energy, like an unformed dream or empty canvas waiting to be acted upon.
For inspiration, in addition to the desert, I turn to books: epic novels, epic histories, and fiction rich in visual imagery. I especially appreciate thinkers who address the grandest of human themes, which are also my themes: grandeur and the ordinary, struggle and futility, illusion and disillusionment, meaningfulness, age, and death.
Working in the desert has come to be a form of meditation. Days are spent, sometimes with a crew but more often in solitude, wordlessly driving, carrying supplies, erecting structures and sets, and studying the slow progress of the sun overhead and its all-powerful, shape-changing, comfort giving and taking effects. My state of mind while I work can range from joy and contentedness to emptiness and doubt, and I believe these shifting emotions, intensified by an intense place, carry through into the best of my eventual photographs. (artist statement)
Very, very beautiful!