Support the Arts
We rely on the generosity of our members and donors to keep our gallery accessible to all. Become a member today and enjoy exclusive benefits.
We rely on the generosity of our members and donors to keep our gallery accessible to all. Become a member today and enjoy exclusive benefits.
Collective Member
Member of The Photographer's Eye Collective.
My relationship with photography began in the second grade and became a definitive pursuit by junior high. Because my family relocated almost annually—navigating six different schools across grades seven through twelve—photography was my anchor. I cobbled together temporary darkrooms wherever we landed. Unconsciously, I intuitively sought a meditative engagement with my surroundings. This drive crystallized when mentors in Germany introduced me to large-format photography. The affinity I felt for the 4x5 view camera was a prelude. In 1979, at an Ansel Adams workshop in Yosemite, Morley Baer introduced me to the 8x10 camera. Composing on that ground glass was magic, and established the methodology that informs my approach today.
While earning my Journalism degree at UNC-Chapel Hill, I worked as a darkroom technician. Following graduation the Marine Corps stationed Sandra, my wife (1975), and me in the high desert at Twentynine Palms, California. It was the best thing photographically the Corps could have done to me. I spent many days in nearby Joshua Tree, an environment that shaped my understanding of place; of landscapes, rocks, trees, and remnants. We took trips to the Colorado River; to Kings Canyon; to Sequoyah. And everywhere I carried my camera.
Once I left active duty with the Marines I recognized that the financial realities of supporting a wife and two daughters outweighed the local market for professional photography, I chose a career in technology to fund my photography. Moving to San Diego in 1982 as a computer programmer, this choice granted me the financial stability and freedom to treat photography as an uncompromising artistic passion. I used vacations and weekends to deepen both my technical execution and spiritual connection to the land. I developed a friendship with photographer Richard Garrod. As the longtime city manager of Monterey, his path validated my own, proving that a career outside the arts could insulate and elevate one's creative vision. I was finally glad I had not tried to make a living from photography. Now I could make the photographs that called to me rather than those I thought would sell.
My 40 or so years’ accumulation of work met a fracture in 2003, when the Cedar Fire destroyed our home in Wildcat Canyon, consuming negatives, equipment, and prints. We rebuilt our home, named Terra Nova, and in 2005, I started over with a studio and a purpose-built darkroom designed for my workflow (and 8x10 enlarger).
My approach to mindful photography led me to develop and teach a workshop in Tuscany on contemplative photography. My invitation to join The Photographer’s Eye Collective was the answer to a long-awaited opportunity to show my work to an appreciative and critical audience.
I am drawn to 'thin places'—thresholds where the veil between the tangible and the transcendent becomes porous, perhaps translucent. I wait for a subject to reach out, wanting to share a relationship with me through a photograph. If I capture an image simply because it is aesthetically pleasing, it remains merely a superficial description. For me, a true photograph requires mutual recognition.
I bring a deep and long internalized contemplative methodology to the making of every photograph, regardless of the camera I use. Decades of working within the exacting traditions of large-format photography have conditioned a permanent state of conscious deceleration within my practice. This deliberate, meditative posture ensures that the final print is never a passive snapshot, but a permanent artifact of a shared encounter.