My entire life has revolved around photography and the permanent challenge that it has provided me. In the ever-changing terrain of photography, I search for ways to expand and shift my perception, and move forward into unchartered photographic space. Photography is a medium for the curious – for those of us who perceive boundaries as markers to be crossed – for those who are seeking the unknown, beyond the preconceived.
As I write, I am struck by the symmetry of my photographic practice with twenty years of intense labor with analog techniques, and just over twenty years working with the possibilities of digital processes and the immense control over the rendering of images that it has induced. Each self-motivated project and process is part of the continual photographic game where boundaries shift readily, due to the vast lightness of the medium’s character. If I were to characterize my independent practice, it would be as a constant dynamic of questioning and changing, of looking back and projecting forward. This is what I believe to be the most beautiful thing about photography and - that it grants you this enormous freedom to change your mind at any given point, to re-route your curiosity and break new ground.
Looking through my independent projects of the past five decades, I see them as truthful records of what I was capable of at a given moment. I remember the hypotheses that prompted my research and the technological discoveries I made but ultimately recognize the uniqueness of each discovery at a point in time. I can see my signature that cuts across subjects, aesthetics and ideas – a signature constituted from the clarity and focus that photography has given me. They carry their status of prototypes – of manifesting new creative territory for me – with their ambitions to perfectly realize a new idea along with the inevitable imperfections that come with deciding for the first time what and what not to do. Throughout my archive, I see my desire to stay in this mindset, before the entirely perfecting modality of mass production and still in the realm of creative discovery and non-exchangeable expression.
Since 2009, my independent projects have circled around abstraction and a creative space that privileges my imagination. I get to put myself into a state where I can be irresponsible yet precise – experience the creative freedom – and focus entirely on my continual questioning and research into the possibilities of image-making. With each new technology comes a new spectrum of possibilities for artists to speculate upon and begin to prototype the genuine extension of the meaning of photography, with all its contemporary variations. The unfinished - the imperfect – nature of each of my photographic abstractions are not only the markers of where I am on my creative journey but the promise of continuing evolution and growth within the field of photography. The heart of photography is within the space between the idea of perfection and the presence of imperfection. With this beautifully forgiving and endlessly rewarding medium, mistakes are overcome, and a new chance is given every day, every click, in everything.