ARTIST STATEMENT

I am a fine art photographer and educator. As a photographer I look for moments of beauty and significance in the world around me. I have always been drawn to the lives of people beginning with a portfolio exploring the relationship between adolescent daughters and their mothers and expanding into portfolios from Honduras, Greece, Bulgaria, and five trips to Cuba. I continuously work on two personal portfolios titled, “Close to Home”, “Solitude” and “I Come from…”. The dignity and beauty of the ordinary – person, place or object – is the foundation of my photography. 

The draw for me is the ordinary moments of living. My style is to engage the people on the streets and to establish a level of comfort, which allows access to their everyday routines. I am observant, almost pondering, as I wait and watch the daily routines of life. I rely on an intuitive sense determining when to interject myself into the scene, conversing and listening, and when to wait and watch.

My images are silver gelatin prints and b/w film in order to suspend reality on one level. I alternate between using a plastic camera and a high quality medium format camera hoping that the “seeing” will connect the formats. I am constantly stripping away the cumbersome equipment and materials striving for simplicity in approach as well as content. In each image I hope that enough is left unstated so that the viewer will question and reflect from the information provided.