Biography

Many of the photographs displayed here are taken in that strip of cities that goes from Washington, up through Philadelphia, New York City and then hooks around upstate NY toward Buffalo and Toronto.

My artistic life began in live storytelling in the early 1990s. I began with oral telling of folk tales and went on to adapting short stories to a live setting. Some favorites of mine were the rich Chekhov short stories, various stories by Maupassan and Gogol and the newer stories of mid-20th century writers. Ilse Aichinger's "The Bound Man" was one I adapted to the stage and performed as a one person show. During this time I had the good fortune to study under Tony Montanaro. He had been a student of Ettiene Decroux and Marcel Marceau in the 1950s. Studying with Tony felt like having a direct connection to a rich lineage of visual and physical storytellers. What I learned from Tony brought a visual and physical element to worlds that before I would render through oral narration.

Around 1997 I began film and video production. I took various intensive technical classes in camera work, lighting, sound and post production at Ryerson Polytechnic in Toronto. I had some excellent old school teachers there who grounded me in the essentials of cinematography. Once again I was in the fortunate position to have direct contact with the lineage of the great cinematographers of the 20th century.

For the next several years I lived behind a video camera, shooting musical documentaries, depicting the miracles of a performance and the ongoing struggles of my musicians to keep their faith in the miracle going.

One of these, Uncommon Stages, was accepted to the Interactive Category of the Sundance Online Film Festival in 2001, the first year they had that category - in the heady ".com" days. This was an interactive documentary that allowed the viewer to follow the character of their choice. It was kind of choose your own adventure in which images of the characters would peel of the screen, sit on the side as icons and wait to be clicked on in order to be followed down a different path in the story.

It was from here that I rooted myself in still photography. The power of the still image, and how elusive its capture can be, captivated me and didn't let go. Sometimes it feels like I'm walking down an empty highway, as the trucks thunder by in the opposite direction.

Many of the scenes I photograph are excerpts from the day-to-day. They catch my eye with the sense of solitude they invoke, which is sometimes solitude in the company of others and other times in isolation. I then hand print them using a platinum printing processs. Platinum printing captures a delicate expression of emotions and atmosphere, through velvety rendition of the mid-tones and blacks, along with very nuanced differentiation of highlights. A description of the platinum process can be found here.

I believe this luxurious treatment is particularly well suited to these sacred moments which are found in the profane of the every day world. It renders a world in which I feel at home.