STATEMENT

Art critic John Berger argues that the photograph is a “trace of an actual event, a trace of a set of appearances.” I view the camera as an extension of memory. Like the eye, the camera records appearances via the mediation of light. It fixes the images it records and protects those images from supersession. In my work, I document the present because it is transitory by nature. I seek to capture and preserve the moment, the instant, the expression -- at that time, in that place. This defines my work as an artist.

My research is community based and is informed by issues surrounding the relationship between individuals and the landscape, sense of place, memory and identity. I am interested in intersections: the land and humans, women and men, the dualities of living in "the last frontier," success and failure. Ultimately, I am interested in how we as human beings experience the land, how we parallel the landscape in our comings and goings, how we define it and are defined by it.