On Hills

I look for vulnerability, tenderness, and absurdity in the built environment. I photograph to examine the conflicts between desire to cooperate with the landscape and attempts to dominate it.

My practice as an artist is rooted in straight photography. I use large-format because it is a generous medium that allows me to keep all the tiny details of the landscape and make immersive, wall-sized prints. It gives me more than I ask for. When I am framing an image in-camera and making decisions about light, distance, and scale, I am brokering a taut and vibrant peace between the nouns (persons, places, things) that inhabit the picture, and I am pleased. When I’m taking a picture I’m thinking: I am making something, and I want to make something that is intricate, detailed, dense—something that rewards close and careful looking.

I photograph to reveal under-seen structures and norms present in our individual and societal relationships to the landscape. I look for vulnerability, tenderness, and absurdity in the built environment of towns and cities, and the conflicts between desires to cooperate with the landscape and attempts to dominate it. In short, I am concerned with matters (and manners) of land use. On a personal, private scale, I look at peoples’ yards, gardens, and homes. On a civic, monumental scale, I look at water infrastructure, new construction, highways, and lot lines. How do people conform to or defy collective expectations about what public and private outdoor spaces should look like or accomplish? How do we use our space? How does this use or misuse bring us together or keep us apart? I seek to offer answers to these questions with my work and use photography as a tool for wonder.