common things

I am fascinated by things inside and outside and the underlying forces that drive us – the desires, fears, loves – that move us, one way or another. 

I like photographing the inside of old buildings and the things I find there, often single objects illuminated, briefly, by light from a nearby window. These photographs were inspired in part by Pablo Neruda’s poems, Odes to Common Things, that celebrate the ordinary things of everyday live and carry within them the stories, real or imagined, of the people who used them. The common things in these photographs are repositories of history, of objects in the lives of strangers that are made new again by my own presence and my own purposes.

curtains and windows

When I was quite young my mother took me to the Russian Ballet whenever it was in town. I became enthralled by luminous diaphanous light bordered by surrounding shadows and darkness illuminated by that light. It became part of the inner landscape of my mind. When I photograph I am drawn to the same quality of light, the glowing high lights that illuminate an object through an open window, an ocean through a break in the clouds, a torn curtain blowing in the window outside an abandoned house. I am fascinated by things in low light places illuminated, however briefly, by light and surrounded by shadows. Each of these photographs is not so much “about” something as a rendering of shadows against the illuminating light. 

“A sequence of photographs…functions as a little drama of dreams with a memory.” 
-Minor White

left and let be

The plains around Rugby, North Dakota are studded with homesteads of families who have lived in the area for generations. Many farm the land, growing sunflower seeds, soybeans, and corn. There are homes, schools, fields and barns that have been abandoned, their owners having died, recently or a generation or more ago, or moved on in search of different lives. The structures have simply been left and let be, too expensive or too full of memories to tear down or rebuild. What endures, in the empty rooms or spaces around the curtains torn by the wind or rain, a weather vane stored improbably in an attic, or a coat left on a hook near a door, is the presence of the people who once lived here. This project is an attempt to capture the melancholy of loss while celebrating what the rooms and objects represent – the keepers and repositories of stories, the facts of everyday lives, illuminated briefly by the passing light.

mark making

Who made these marks that have persisted over time, held this book in their hand, pulled the bookmark down so as not to lose their place? What were they thinking when they doodled on the flyleaf of a prayer book or school primer? Who was Tom? 

These pictures are of marks left in books and papers – scribbles, signatures, printer colophons, a line of letters like a slice from the interior of a book. Here the evidence is not only of a small, handmade flourish but also of the tools we fashion to expand the reach these expressions.

off print

Old books are old souls, imprinted with the touch of hands from another time. Fragile pages and wrinkled bindings are not unlike what our skin and bones become when we age. They become stand-ins for the times and desires of the people for whom they once were important. They are bibles, histories, songs, accounts. In this way they are bridges from the past, telling us how people once lived their lives: the graceful scripts, illuminations and drawings, all the things that mattered once to individuals and communities. I have photographed books in Boston and Alabama, in Amherst and Berlin, in Scotland and in my own study. I often use selective focus to throw some of the image back into the past, or sharp detail to bring it forward again into our day and time, re-visioned.

pacific tide

I grew up with the sound of the fog horn close by my bedroom window, the urgent sound of waves breaking against sea stacks just down the road. At low tide or in a brewing storm, the ocean is like a live beast, heaving its mighty form beneath the surface, waiting. I stand at the edge of this ocean and am alive to its force within itself and in me. The grand ocean boulders, thrown up from the sea floor when the earth moved geologic times ago, and the endless force of the water flying against them, create an endless drama, never the same, always a little frightening. I am often overcome by the ceaseless movement and the vast expanse of water, and familiar as it is to me, I know it is an essential part of myself. 

These images were made with an Ebony 4x5 view camera over a period of many years. They were made at Navarro Beach in Mendocino, McKerricher State Park in Fort Bragg, Baker Beach in San Francisco, and numbers of hidden beaches and state parks along the Oregon and Washington State coast. Like the ocean itself, this project is ongoing and ever changing.

persistence of memory

I am interested in the way we remember – what we want to leave behind—and how we preserve memory in tangible ways. These include objects that speak directly of the past and those that act as small gestures with which the living memorialize those they have lost. 

This work was made in a genizah in a large Jewish cemetery in Boston. In Hebrew, genizah means “reserved” or “hidden” and is the place where a person’s books, papers, and religious artifacts are buried. It is part of ancient Jewish custom that when someone dies, sacred documents are buried in a grave with the same dignity and ritual as the human body. It is a way of respecting and remembering. 

“He who lives in the memory of his loved ones, Is not dead, he is only far away! Only he who is forgotten is dead.” 
-Immanuel Kant

the gloaming

Fort Miley army base in San Francisco was on the other side of the ice-plant-covered hill behind the house I grew up in.  Every evening as the sun went down over the Pacific Ocean, a lone bugle sounded Taps.  It is the sound and feeling I associate with home:

Day is done, Gone the Sun

From the lake, From the hill,

From the sky.

All is well, Safely rest

God is nigh.

I didn’t know these words, certainly not the meaning of this nightly ritual.  The base is now part of the National Park Service that took it over decades ago, preserving the buildings and history of this place, making it accessible to visitors.  But at the time, it felt like my own private moment.

Now decades later on the Outer Cape where one can see the sun come up over the Atlantic in the morning and watch as it disappears over Cape Cod Bay in the evening, I relive those childhood moments.  When everyone has left the beach as the sun disappears, I like to photograph the aftermath in the sky – a time I call The Gloaming – and the drama of another day done, when all is well and at rest.