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Collective Member
A native of Los Angeles, I grew up in the foothills northeast of the San Fernando Valley. Surrounded by trees, our wood and glass house was designed by my architect father. My parents encouraged individuality and self-expression in our family. My work as a professional photographer began when I was an undergraduate at UC Santa Barbara, serving as a staff photographer for the student newspaper. I have been making photographs in one way or another ever since, working professionally in photojournalism, portraiture, architectural, and other areas of commercial photography. I served as Palomar College’s official photographer for more than 20 years and during that time earned an MFA in photography from Academy of Art University, San Francisco. Currently, I teach photography at Palomar in addition to working on her own projects, including environmental portraiture and still life photography. Additionally, I am active playing flute in various ensembles including the Palomar Symphony Orchestra and the Pacific Coast Concert Band.
While I have never been comfortable with the idea of classification, my photography work fits nicely into two broad categories: People and Everything Else.
My series of environmental portraits, Transitions, (2012-2014) represents much of what my work with people is about, examining the interconnectedness and separateness of humans. With this series, I chose to focus on individuals who were going through a period of significant transition in their lives, and to draw parallels between their experience, the viewers’ and my own. The Transitions series evolved into another series, Minding Hope, which further explores individuals facing challenges with resilience and courage.
We are each at a different point on the conveyor belt of life. We are all moving together, and yet we are all separate with our own unique points of view and sets of experiences. My images are meant to give us a moment’s pause, a place to stop and consider – and honor someone else’s experience, to empathize with them and to be comforted in knowing that we are connected.
As someone of Jewish descent who grew up in a primarily Christian community, I became familiar early on with the idea of otherness, and what it feels like to be an outsider. In my work with people, I look for vulnerability and honesty, a sense of bareness.
My “Everything Else” work is a mix: architectural, still life, alternative processes, the natural world, recording glimpses, moments in time that reveal the wonder of light and dark and color and how they interplay in one moment that will never occur again exactly that way.