FINE ART Photography

Walking along the tidal basin in Washington D.C. in the Winter of 2009, I was transfixed by the distinct shapes produced by the cracking and buckling sheets of ice; a sort of cold geometry. I worked the images to bring out the translucency and luminosity of the layered ice. The effect produced is reminiscent of prints produced using the photo intaglio process.

On a whim, while reviewing a highly detailed image I had captured beneath the Williamsburg Bridge in lower Manhattan, I mirrored the image and was struck by the greatly enhanced mass of the trestles, and when rotated, the transformation into something entirely different. The resulting image was somehow not quite comprehensible but certainly plausible. "Reflecting and Rotating" other images consisting entirely, or mostly, of man-made structures and artifacts created fascinating environments that invite the viewer to explore.

Hired by Maryland Life magazine to photograph the Lonaconing Silk Mill for the cover of their special issue on "Endangered Places" I quickly realized that I had entered someplace very special and that one or two shots would not suffice. The gracious owner of the Silk Mill, sensing my enthusiasm, granted me access for two entire bone-chilling days to ramble through the bowels of the mill with a ladder, a tripod and my camera gear. Many of these images were presented on large suspended canvases at my 2007 show at the Saville Gallery and also at my 2009 show at the Dorchester Center for the Arts in Cambridge.

Clearly I have a fascination with places forgotten by man and ravaged by time and the elements. Shown here is a small collection of images captured at various locations in western Maryland, including the no-longer-standing sawtooth building at Canal Place in Cumberland, Maryland.

I am particularly drawn to images of plants where the scale is ambiguous; a "forest" of carnivorous plants 2 inches tall or a large stand of mature palm trees masquerading as an electron micrograph of hair fibers.

Since moving to western Maryland several years ago both my wife and I have become what I playfully refer to as "townies"; that is, primarily city dwellers that only on occasion would venture out into the mountains, woods, and rivers. It took a commission from our beautiful new regional hospital to photograph the "natural and beautiful places in our region" to gain a deep appreciation of how fortunate we are to live in the midst of this amazingly beautiful part of the country.

I am endlessly fascinated with human artifacts that quite often are missed as we collectively go about our busy lives; the often-overlooked details and the rarely-observed wider view.

In my travels, as one would expect, I run into people of all sorts, most of them wonderful and quite interesting. Below is a very small sampling of some of these "characters". Though not portraits, per se, these images do show them in the rich context of their lives at that moment and place.