Statement for COMPOSITED NEIGHBORHOODS
In this project I'm using intensively layered photographs to do abstracted explorations of the
built environment. I seek out canonical features — repeated structures in an urban
landscape, common elements of a city grid, typical houses in a neighborhood, characteristic
details of a district — comprehensively photograph them, and combine the results digitally to
develop a composite view of the subject.
This is a new project and a new direction, but it relates to my longstanding artistic interests in
formal repetition, pattern, and geometry; in the tension between representation and
abstraction inherent in photography; and in how we recognize and visually understand the
iconic, the typical, and the archetypal.
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Statement for CRANES + CONTAINERS
The Port of Oakland is both hard to miss and easy to overlook. The sheer looming
physicality of the giant cranes and the stacks of containers, awesome in person, becomes
part of the background when seen from the freeway or a seat on the train, or when passed
en route to some sightseeing destination.
But the containers and cranes inspire me; I visit them often on my photographic mission to
find enigmatic isolated details and unexpected overlooked beauty in the real world. They
provide rich raw material -- patterns, textures, geometry, visual rhythm -- for my
preoccupations as a photographer.
Since I also design machines for a living, the built and manufactured environment in general
is alive for me. I'm endlessly fascinated with how things work, how they behave
mechanically, how they express themselves as designed objects, and what roles they
perform in contemporary civilization.
The modern containerized waterfront particularly intrigues me as a place that is dependent
on both highly engineered machines and highly skilled people. The objects and the
landscape reflect both of these imperatives. The environment is designed to serve both the
machines and the humans, though at starkly different scales.
The port is a wonder of the modern world, hidden in plain sight.
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Statement for INTENTIONAL BLURS
This blur series is drawn from a cross-section of my photographic work over the past six
years. The blurs in these pictures result from factors including camera motion, manipulation
of depth of field, and reflections from transparent and translucent materials. I use blurs both
for expression (communicating a sense of motion, for example) and for abstraction (making a
photograph that exists on its own terms, not simply as representation). Creating a blur
picture is occasionally a release of control in making a photograph; more often, though, it's a
precise tool in itself, one more method for carefully observing the world.
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In general, my photographic preoccupations involve such matters as formal issues of
geometry, pattern, repetition, and rhythm; bold graphic impact in 2D space; and enigmatic
isolated details and unexpected overlooked beauty in the real world.
I also design machines for a living, so the built and manufactured environment in general is
alive for me. My engineering point of view informs my photographic eye in terms of what to
shoot and how to present it. My overall goal is to abstract out pieces of the human-built
enviroment and create images that inspire observers to see something they've overlooked or
take a fresh look at something familiar.