EDITION INFORMATION

Photography holds the impossibly seductive promise of learning to see in a new way which is at one and the same time democratic (the "subject" of each photograph is as worthy as the next) and highly individualized (the unique formal qualities of the picture such as color, framing, lighting and personal, cultural and historical referends may be conscious choices made by the photographer or serendipitous). Walt Whitman's stance of treating all moments as of equal consequence (the democratic) and Gary Winogrand's stated purpose in taking photographs (to see what the subject looks like as a photograph - individualized seeing) are the essential dynamics behind much of my photography.

This image is from the series, On the Edge of Town, which records the tension in the landscape at the boundaries of small towns. When economic and human equilibrium is reached, towns are resigned to annex the meadowland or foothills around them, in response to the demands of landowners, real estate speculators and developers, for unfettered expansion.

I try to use the tension I feel when viewing and experiencing the forces fueling the unimaginably voracious engine of our economy as a gauge of how successful the camera and its operator have been in visually reconciling, via the composition of the photograph, a dynamic, that in reality, cannot be reconciled, only endured.