Artist Statement
I have been a photographer for over five decades. I was first influenced by California West Coast landscape photographers and mentors Ansel Adams, Brett Weston, Morley Baer and Al Weber - all outstanding artists and great people. Since then, my work has evolved from those roots, and its current direction is synthetic exploration.
For many years, photography was considered an analytic medium. Artists' imagery captured the outer world and reflected how they saw it. My earlier works are in that category. However, for the past two decades I have created synthetic collage works, employing an expanded definition of photography that allows a mindful, premeditated response to the world that confronts me daily. The results are pieces that are synthesized from within my mind, rather than solely analyzed from without.
These works are made from combined elements that I photographed, then arranged and layered. The elements may include man-made objects, plants, animal and human forms, both living and dead, that will ultimately make up a single image. I consider each collage a stage set, on which the mounted elements together explore contemporary issues: life and death, injustice, the plight of the environment, dehumanization, and in every case, the mystery and reality of time. They also evidence an ongoing struggle between order and disorder, building and disintegration in today's competing theaters of social, political, religious, scientific and, of course, personal concerns.
The digital expansion of photography allows both sensitivities, the analytic and the synthetic, to reveal who I am as a photographer.
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