The most important aspect of photography to me is the engagement of imagination. When I photograph, I try to enter a state where I see possibilities, not scenes. This is part of why the use of a macro lens is so important to my photography. In looking at the world with such a magnified and reduced field of vision, much of the context of the scenery is lost and wonderfully alien landscapes begin to emerge. Sometimes, the image in the viewfinder is so far removed from the environment from which it was framed as too seem something completely unknown.

These are the images that continuously fascinate me and bring me the greatest pleasure in creating. It is in these images that I feel that I begin to practice photography as a process of deep engagement with the world. Interacting with the world this way becomes a sort of practice in which I suspend many of my habitual visual responses and actively participate in the act of seeing. And this is the key to much of my photography.

I feel that the perception can be an art form if practiced. Our sensations come to us gratis, but the final perceptions that we experience are the result of our own complicated neural processes. And these processes are by no means fixed. The world we perceive changes when we make the intentional choice to attend to your perceptions more closely.

And so then, in the end, this is what photography has become for me; a way to actively engage with the world in a way that challenges my perceptions and asks me to become a full participant in the exchange; to take responsibility for finding form and meaning in images that may apparently lack both; and to remain open to the possibility that the images that I have created or captured may surprise and delight me with what energies choose to reveal themselves in the final image. More and more in these last ten years, photography has become an integral part of my life and the way that I make my way through it.

To the gallery...