In these far away places, I look for way stations between cultures where one can see the past and future simultaneously. Seeing these changes over such a short time is a perspective that is at once disorienting and tragic. I try to make images that show these things, or at least some of the emotional truths behind them, because I know each time I return everything will be almost unrecognizable.

This picture was taken several years ago, just outside of Kashgar, in front of a local mosque. I returned recently to find the whole area razed and replaced by shoddy cinder block apartments coated with white tiles. Indigenous architecture has always been a part of Kashgar's great cultural legacy and it is being destroyed at a breathtaking rate. In spring 2009, the Chinese government decided to completely tear down Kashgar's old city, a vast warren of mud-brick buildings that make up the heart of the city.

In these far away places, I look for way stations between cultures where one can see the past and future simultaneously. Seeing these changes over such a short time is a perspective that is at once disorienting and tragic. I try to make images that show these things, or at least some of the emotional truths behind them, because I know each time I return everything will be almost unrecognizable.

This tent is the home of a small community of hardscrabble loggers who live on this holy mountain. Tibetans consider the sources of rivers to be holy places and decorate them accordingly. The loggers tend to the prayer flags and serve tea to pilgrims. They cut trees when necessary and sell them to Chinese truckers who bring them back down to the mainland.

In these far away places, I look for way stations between cultures where one can see the past and future simultaneously. Seeing these changes over such a short time is a perspective that is at once disorienting and tragic. I try to make images that show these things, or at least some of the emotional truths behind them, because I know each time I return everything will be almost unrecognizable.

This is a new road, cutting across land that had, for centuries, been used communally by nomads for yak grazing. The road was scheduled to be paved, and on some stretches, fences will inevitably follow.

In these far away places, I look for way stations between cultures where one can see the past and future simultaneously. Seeing these changes over such a short time is a perspective that is at once disorienting and tragic. I try to make images that show these things, or at least some of the emotional truths behind them, because I know each time I return everything will be almost unrecognizable.

This could be virtually any street in the Uyghur section of Kashgar. These areas smell of grilled lamb and goat and are loud with the sound of people buying and selling. On these streets, you will still find fortune tellers, letter writers and medicine men selling snake oil, as well as people selling sewing machines and making shoes. The government recently decreed that sidewalks would be paved and that merchants would not be able to sell their wares on the street, but my guess is that this declaration will be happily ignored.

In these far away places, I look for way stations between cultures where one can see the past and future simultaneously. Seeing these changes over such a short time is a perspective that is at once disorienting and tragic. I try to make images that show these things, or at least some of the emotional truths behind them, because I know each time I return everything will be almost unrecognizable.

This is a collection of four 11x14 prints from the project.

My artistic practice is focused on the medium of photography and potentially, all lens-based imaging. Growing out of an initial interest in constructed photographs, my current projects aim to explore the potential of truth, illusion, contingency and the physical and perceptual properties of light, time and space. In order to structure these phenomena into the plane of the photograph, as well as to organize and plan the use of the camera and lenses' technical impositions, I commonly borrow strategies from both the scientific method and various approaches in music. Specifically, a number of works have been constructed by an approach inspired by John Zorn’s “game piece” concept of experimental music.

My explorations often take inspiration from the increasing possibilities of digital imaging as well. Deconstructing these processes in an analogue form results in photographs that are complex in their reading, resting somewhere, uncomfortably, between both digital imaging and painting. It is my goal for the resultant photographs—"tests" as I often call them—to be a rich visual experience and to offer insight into both the malleability of perceptual reality and the construction of meaning regarding our shift into an increasingly hyper-real or digital world.

My artistic practice is focused on the medium of photography and potentially, all lens-based imaging. Growing out of an initial interest in constructed photographs, my current projects aim to explore the potential of truth, illusion, contingency and the physical and perceptual properties of light, time and space. In order to structure these phenomena into the plane of the photograph, as well as to organize and plan the use of the camera and lenses' technical impositions, I commonly borrow strategies from both the scientific method and various approaches in music. Specifically, a number of works have been constructed by an approach inspired by John Zorn’s “game piece” concept of experimental music.

My explorations often take inspiration from the increasing possibilities of digital imaging as well. Deconstructing these processes in an analogue form results in photographs that are complex in their reading, resting somewhere, uncomfortably, between both digital imaging and painting. It is my goal for the resultant photographs—"tests" as I often call them—to be a rich visual experience and to offer insight into both the malleability of perceptual reality and the construction of meaning regarding our shift into an increasingly hyper-real or digital world.

Chaos manifests itself alongside form in my work. Chaos is powerful in that it is beyond human control; specifically, it interests me in depiction as catastrophe - as the uncontrollable and random force of natural cataclysms. I enjoy the emergence of fragments of imagery in relation to a destructive force - they become reduced and ephemeral, they are representative of the momentary and transient. However, according to the scientific study of chaos, it is the minute and transient that manifest as larger factors, further down in the equation, in the study of matter.

Chaos manifests itself alongside form in my work. Chaos is powerful in that it is beyond human control; specifically, it interests me in depiction as catastrophe - as the uncontrollable and random force of natural cataclysms. I enjoy the emergence of fragments of imagery in relation to a destructive force - they become reduced and ephemeral, they are representative of the momentary and transient. However, according to the scientific study of chaos, it is the minute and transient that manifest as larger factors, further down in the equation, in the study of matter.