Artist's Statement:
Over the past three decades I have lived in Ithaca, NY, Boston, Washington, D.C., and currently San Diego. However, Chilmark, where my parents live year-round is the place that feels like home. I return to the island at least twice a year for two to three weeks each visit.
I first started coming to Martha’s Vineyard 32 years ago, making my relationship with the Island the most enduring connection I’ve ever had with a specific place. I formed an immediate bond with the landscape and soon began to make photographs here. Over 50% of the images in my portfolio were shot on Martha’s Vineyard.
At first I shot with a 35mm Pentax camera, and made lots and lots of color pictures of the beautiful sunsets off the inland coast.
A couple of years later I switched to black and white film and began shooting with an old, large-format view camera.
There is a peaceful, rejuvenating natural beauty here that remains largely unspoiled and I am sure that visitors and residents alike find the quality of life here very compelling. The pace of life and the kindness of people here make the Vineyard a treasured refuge, whether temporary or permanent, from the mainland.
It is the inner peace and calm that I experience here that I have tried to express through my work. It’s like pulling in a deep breath of fresh air and then slowly releasing it, or the crystalline air, the impossibly blue sky, and the rich, earthy smell of newly fallen leaves in Autumn. It is sitting alone atop a cliff, watching the sunrise over the ocean, or standing on the deck of the ferry mesmerized by the bow wake.
Though I knew what I wanted to express through my images, success did not come easily. For 15 years I struggled, making only lousy pictures – pictures that failed to express what I felt. Then, one year, I began to sense some change in a couple of my images. And while not entirely successful, there were areas within the images that hinted at what I was trying to express. I spent a lot of time contemplating why it was that these images were more successful for me than the others and finally developed some theories regarding how we perceive the world around us.
My thoughts on this subject get quite technical and I have been known to start prattling on about the wavelength of light, etc. However, to put it simply I believe that our sense of experience is built up over time – a composite of many short-term events. I will often suggest this analogy: Suppose you meet someone for the first time, your impression of that person is not a snapshot in your mind of the first time you saw that person, but rather a portrait you have assembled from many separate moments. Each time that person exhibits a new facial expression or hand gesture, you add that into your impression of who that person is. Your image of that person - how you feel about that person -- is formed over time, rather than upon a single expression or gesture.
Likewise, I believe that our impression of the world is based upon our total experience. For example, the ocean has always made me feel calm, relaxed, and contented. If I were to take an instantaneous snapshot of the ocean, the photo would include waves with jagged edges, salt spray, and foam. This type of image does not make me feel calm - it does not represent how the ocean makes me feel as I stare out over the water. Instead, what I am responding to is the underlying, fundamental form of the ocean, its vast expansiveness and the strong line of the horizon, both of which are very stable, calming forms.
Another element, that I believe many people can relate to, is the soothing rhythm of the waves breaking on the shore. By definition, a rhythm is not an instantaneous event – it is not a snapshot – but rather an event that takes place over a period of time. The trick here is how does one express these feelings through a static, unchanging photograph? My goal as an artist is to reveal what is felt but unseen, not only to share my experiences in these extraordinary places, but to help us understand and reconcile our differing subjective and objective views of the world. To this end I have worked with the camera’s unique ability to “average time” making long exposures from 1 to 60 minutes in duration.
My work is represented by 12 galleries around the world from Tokyo to Zurich, and can be found in many museum, corporate and private collections.
Original prints of my images are limited to editions of 50 comprised of (35) 13” x 13” prints, (12) 36” x 36” prints and (3) 48” x 48” Museum Prints. The scale of the large prints make them especially immersive.
Using long exposures ranging from 20 seconds up to 60 minutes, I have tried to filter out what I call the "visual noise" of everyday life in order to reveal the fundamental, underlying forms of our world -- it is these forms that I think we respond to on a visceral level. My long time exposures average out all the short-term, temporal events -- the visual noise -- within a scene.
I believe that our impressions of what we see are built up over time - a composite of many short-term events. For example, if you meet someone for the first time, your impression of that person is not a snapshot in your mind of the first time you saw that person, but rather a portrait you have assembled from many separate moments. Every time that person exhibits a new facial expression or hand gesture, you add that to your impression of who that person is. Your image of that person - how you feel about that person -- is formed over time, rather than upon a single expression or gesture.
Likewise, I believe that our impression of the world is based upon our total experience. For example, the ocean has always made me feel calm, relaxed, and contented. If I were to take a snapshot of the ocean, the photo would include waves with jagged edges, salt spray, and foam. This type of image, while very dynamic, does not make me feel calm - it doesn't represent how the ocean makes me feel as I stare out over the water. Instead, I am responding to the underlying, fundamental form of the ocean, the ocean's vast expansiveness and the strong line of the horizon, both of which are very stable, calming forms. Using my camera's unique ability to average time, I have tried to reveal these forms - forms that, while often obscured by the visual noise of everyday life, have a profound influence upon us.
Biography:
Born: Baltimore, MD. 1960
Lives in San Diego, California
Education: 1979-1984 BS, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY
