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As a social documentary photographer, I am fascinated with the themes of place (as a repository of memory and symbol), the passage of time, looking at the forbidden and forgotten - places that are hard to look at, that we often don't want to look at, or that those in charge don't want us to see. I do a kind of street survey, focusing on buildings and warehouses, prisons, mining towns, train stations, cityscapes, graffiti and architectural details, using ambient light. I study how people have interacted with their environment, and the how the space can take on a life of its own, often with ghosts at every corner. Many of my images are of settings that people have left behind like empty skins. My subjects are often backyards, back alleys, back doors and hallways of structures. What absorbs my interest is the spirit of the place itself with its inherent memories of the past still lingering, something lost, old, left behind.

My current work, Alcatraz: Seen & Unseen, is a long term project that really began in earnest in 1998. Alcatraz Penitentiary sits atop a small island in the middle of San Francisco Bay, and when the fog rolls in, the bone-chilling dampness permeates every corner. In countless trips there, I have met with the darker sides of human nature, walking in the footsteps of former convicts and guards in places that were never meant to be seen by the public. As you step into a cell, you can sense the emotions trapped in this fortress that inmates called “Hellcatraz.”

This legendary American "supermax" prison is full of peeling paint, rust, crumbling concrete, broken glass - and a tremendous sense of scale, with long rows of tiny cells and very high ceilings. The vast, cold silence of its cellblocks, corridors and empty spaces speak volumes for the boredom, hopelessness and routine that made up a day in the life here. It was hard on inmates and guards alike.

This photographic project has developed over the years into a survey of both the island's accessible and unknown parts - the off-limits areas that visitors rarely get to see, and it includes three of Alcatraz’s recent histories - as military garrison, federal penitentiary, occupied island.

In 2001, I spent many hours reading some of the original inmate files housed in the National Archives in an effort to get a feel for the environment of the prison. These men included bank robbers, political prisoners convicted of espionage, famous (and not-so-famous) gangsters, kidnappers, counterfeiters, drug dealers, car thieves and escape artists. Amongst the hand-written letters, confiscated notes, newspaper clippings and telegrams, incident reports, periodic inmate progress reviews and other records, a sense of what it was like to be a part of this penitentiary (from many different perspectives) began to emerge for me. I found the individual stories of daily life and mundane concerns to be both fascinating and emotionally wrenching.

I also attended the Annual Alcatraz Alumni Reunion hosted by the National Park Service for the last couple of years, and had the good fortune to meet many ex-convicts and former correctional officers that come to the island every year to share a meal together, and reminisce about their past experiences on The Rock.

Technical information: Utilizing only ambient light, I shoot in two formats, 35mm and medium format (6x4.5, 6x6 and 6x7). I print in editions of 25, on 11x14 warmtone Ilford fiber paper and archivally tone with selenium.