I like images that challenge reality and sustain their mystery for a prolonged period of time so I can continue looking at them, and I still ponder what they are about. I believe imagination is the primary currency of the artist. Artists come up with visions that open the world to other possibilities. I see my photography as a spiritual activity. I work on a regular basis and there is a sense of ritual involved. It is a personal quest that permits me to challenge accepted ways of seeing our world. My creative process begins when I get out with the camera and interact with the world. A camera is truly a license to explore. There are no uninteresting things. There are just uninterested people. I have a predilection for imagery that has aspects of enigma and mystery because it takes me in and yet leaves me a little uncomfortable so I have to consider the situation more fully. If we didn’t dream, reality wouldn’t exist.
I reach stages in the darkroom where I’m just at some crucial point and I don’t know what to do and I will apply a basic Gestalt technique that asks, What’s the worst thing that’s going to happen? I can waste ten more sheets of paper and a couple of hours. What’s the best thing that can happen? I can astound myself. Thinking of that mantra causes me to push further, which is important since many of my lasting images have come from the fringes of my consciousness. The idea that the creative gesture in photography was when you clicked the shutter was popular when I was a graduate student. I’d talk myself out of shooting, or I ended up with a lot of images. I think it’s important to have a playful sensibility in terms of creating art but play is not the opposite of serious. Playful is just an attitude that allows you to try things, to trust your pre-conscious brain.
And photography is just life remembering itself. The concept that I was known for, post-visualization and pre-visualization, still remains as the dominant aesthetic. I always say: something good about Photoshop, it gives you an immense number of visual options; something bad, it gives you an immense number of visual options…
