Elemental Victories

This is a series I have been working on since 1994, since being a student at San Francisco Art Institute. The images are not computer manipulated. They are printed in the darkroom from single 4x5" negatives. The objects in them are found at the location where the photograph is taken, and sometimes they are moved a few feet for better compostion. The lighting is done on-scene using a long exposure, flashlights and off-camera strobe, and a lot of patience.

I hope that the message in them is evident but not heavy-handed. I am not attempting to make a single statement, but only to visually explore man's relationship with nature, which at times is perceived as a conflict. I am fascinated by the processes of time, and how the earth seems to move on a much slower clock than our own, and how it often heals itself of the wounds which we inflict upon it.

I have been trained as both a painter and photographer. The "Elemental Victories" series is a melding of the two disciplines, employing a photographic technique known as "painting with light." In 1998, I began another series of digital images, "Altered Landscapes," which approaches this melding of genres from a different perspective.