My photography explores themes of "place" (as a repository of memory and symbol, and as a cultural artifact), the passage of time, looking at the forbidden and forgotten. I search out sites that touch the deeper emotions – places that are hard to look at, or where those in charge don't want us to see. This is a commitment to finding the "truth" (if there is such a thing) and a reminder of our choices as human beings. My method is to do a kind of street survey, focusing on buildings & industrial warehouses, prisons, train stations, cityscapes, graffiti and architectural details, using ambient light. I study how people have interacted with their environment and how the space can take on a life of its own, often with ghosts in every corner. Many of my images are of settings that people have left behind like empty skins.

It seems the world is increasingly a very difficult place to live for so many – perhaps we've entered a new dark age – and I'm needing to focus my attention (and my camera) on social issues, starting right in my own back yard. I've begun a longterm project, Within a Ten-Mile Radius, that is about really seeing my immediate surroundings, which include many immigrant neighbors, mi barrio Roseland, whatever life looks like within ten miles of my house. More to come...

I shoot mostly in medium format (6x6 and 6x7) and tend to favor wide angle lenses. I print in editions of 25, on 11x14 warmtone Ilford fiber paper and archivally tone with selenium. Recently I've begun a kind of hybrid process: shooting in film, then scanning the negatives and printing with archival inkjet. And, I'm designing my first artist books, printing digitally and handbinding them.

My visual mentors are Eugene Atget, Walker Evans, Robert Frank, August Sander, Francisco Mata Rosas, Eniac Martínez, Pentti Sammallahti, Simon Norfolk, Sylvia Plachy, John Gossage, Albert Renger-Patzsch, Shimon Attie, Ilse Bing, and various Bauhaus photographers. I am also wildly fond of Kurt Schwitters, Anselm Kiefer, Die Brücke & Der Blaue Reiter, Max Beckmann, Felix Nussbaum, Enrique Chagoya, and the design work & font foundry of Emigre.