I’m currently working on a project exploring the geology of northern California and southern Oregon and the human and animal mark making that is imprinted on this volcanic formed landscape.
These bleached and burned cans were collected from public lands in the Oregon-Nevada high desert. They have evolved into abstract forms, layered and reshaped by time and weather while retaining hints of their original state.
Sizes vary
Archival pigment prints
A visual compendium of trees removed for the management of wildfires, drought, and disease from southern Oregon and northern California.
11”x14” each
Archival pigment prints mounted to wood and resin coated.
This is a deconstructed bird’s nest from the Conard Environmental Research Area, a designated research site in the Iowa tallgrass prairie. This is one of several birds nests I have been dissecting and documenting to explore the local natural and manmade detritus that are the raw material of use to common nesting birds. I imagine each element of the landscape carefully curated by the animal for both function and form.
4”x5” photos mounted to plexi and resin coated
I photograph within the designated wilderness areas of the American West in which the flora and fauna are carefully tracked, counted and managed. The preservation of these designated natural spaces represents complex and intertwined relationship between the natural world, local cultural histories, and ongoing conservation and management efforts by rangers and scientists. I learn about studies being conducted on various plant and animal species in these designated wilderness sites and photograph the habitats that are both highly monitored while simultaneously wild and mysterious.
“In my hand I held the most remarkable of all living things, a creature of astounding abilities that elude our understanding, or extraordinary, even bizarre senses, of stamina and endurance far surpassing anything else in the animal world. Yet my captive measured a mere five inches in length and weighed less than half an ounce, about the weight of a fifty-cent piece. I held a truly awesome enigma, a bird.” - A.C. Fisher Jr., National Geographic, 1979
These images were taken during a summer bird banding season at the Wright Refuge in Eureka, CA to collect data on migrating songbirds. The birds are measured and tagged as they descend upon the refuge, making their way along the California coast to their various breeding grounds. During the very brief time these birds are in the care of the ornithologists, there is an intimate yet fleeting physical encounter between these two animals. Although this encounter derives from an objective pursuit of a greater understanding on the natural world, it is no less sublime.
I create photographs along the periphery of rural communities in the western United States -the spaces nestled between national forest lands and private property or the easement zones along county roads and greenbelts. Existing as neither private nor public, these liminal spaces simultaneously imply autonomy and lawlessness. Without a clearly defined function, these borderlands are an overlap of unruliness and regulation. They contain evidence of the disruptive character of human activity, efforts at cultivation, and the inherent wildness of an environment.
My photographs are of subtle and aggressive relationships within the natural world. They document the natural movement of land, disturbances within its contours, and discarded objects contained within. The source of action that has defined or altered a site or object is often unclear. Within each frame and throughout the series, the familiar and the ominous coexist. My goal is to create implied narratives of the orderly and untamable. It is through this visual investigation that I question the nature of nature and the desire to define the boundaries between the knowable and unpredictable landscape.
In Towards a Philosophy of Nature, Robert P. Harrison suggests that, “precisely at the moment when we have overcome the earth and become unearthly in our modes of dwelling...we insist on our kinship with the animal world. We suffer these days from a new form of collective anxiety: species loneliness.” Through my photographs I aim to document the sadness, beauty and humor in these human-animal relationships and examine the ambiguous hierarchy between imposition and tenderness. The work reflects a conflict between the human desire to control nature and the intimacy and affection we afford our non-human counterparts.
I photograph boxers, mixed martial arts fighters, ring girls and spectators engaged in amateur public fights. Functioning as an American rite of passage, these public showdowns contain both ceremonial pageantry and messy, bodily chaos. I am interested in the rituals surrounding these public spectacles, the fighters’ ability and inability to harness a sense of bravado, and the emotional space required to train for and execute full contact combat with another human being.
Through the act of making photographs, I attempt to give reverence to the primal humanness of this pursuit. As the official ringside photographer, I make images for the fighters, promoters, and advertisers, while simultaneously contributing to my fine art practice. Utilizing a combination of choreographed images and straight visual documents, I am influenced by tough-guy personas and stereotypical images of fight culture machismo supplied by popular culture. The photographs attempt to acknowledge these formulaic images of masculinity while examining the edges of the pomp and circumstance along the ring.
Various projects from 2003-2010
Animal Passage explores the markings made by mule deer, elk and pronghorn along seasonal migration routes in Wyoming. The migration routes in this region are some of the longest terrestrial migrations in North America. They are made visible through Google Earth satellite imagery, but remain as unlabeled passageways, revealing themselves only as abstract markings on the land.
From a series of photographs, handmade books, and videos created from the raw material collected by birds for nests at various sites throughout the western United States
