Every image begins when you begin to think
I use photography to build thought machines.
Each image is a visual thought experiment. They are not made to provide answers. They are built to see what happens when everyday objects temporarily lose their familiar roles and begin to carry human experiences.
The real work only emerges in the encounter with the viewer.
Notes from the Workshop
I have always studied how people create meaning. I used to do this by observing people in their own reality. Today, I do it by creating images and observing how people encounter them.
I studied at Brooks Institute of Photography in Santa Barbara, California, where I earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Photography between 1979 and 1983. For most of my professional life, I then worked with documentary film, television and visual storytelling. The camera was a tool for understanding how people act, communicate and create meaning.
Today, I use photography differently.
I build situations in which everyday objects temporarily lose their familiar roles. Not to illustrate an idea, but to discover what happens when someone encounters them.
I rarely know exactly what an image is about when I begin.
The finished image is not the end of the process. What happens when someone encounters it is part of the work.
It has to happen for real
I build the images physically in front of the camera.
This is not a principle of photographic purity. It is part of the work itself. When the objects are real, something can happen that I did not plan.
Materials can resist. Chance can intervene. What I build can respond with something I had not thought of myself.
That is why the process matters to me. I do not simply want to execute an image that already exists, fully formed, in my head. I want to leave room for something to happen along the way.
I want the impossible to have happened in front of the camera first.
The light
I work slowly with light, often during long exposures. Instead of illuminating the entire scene at once, I build the light step by step.
It is less about showing what an object looks like and more about exploring what happens when it is given a presence it would not normally have.
The light is therefore not simply a way of making the image visible. It is part of its construction.
Still a beginner
Despite a long professional career, I try to retain a beginner’s approach.
Not out of modesty, but out of necessity.
For me, working artistically means not knowing in advance. It means being able to follow what happens rather than simply carrying out what I have already decided.
Each image is an attempt – sometimes an answer, often a question.
I don’t take pictures.
I make them.
