A Thousand Words
13: both bad luck and boyhood's end. The year I turned 13 I was given one
of the most significant, life-changing gifts I would ever receive: A small folding
rangefinder my Grandfather brought home from his time as a tank driver in the
Korean war. He never spoke of Korea, and I never saw him use the camera,
but it felt like a great honor nevertheless.
In that moment I couldn't comprehend that what my Grandfather really gave me was a new means of framing the world around me. Of seeing it…understanding it. Soon my whole life would begin to accelerate, and I reckon he knew with this little jewel of gears and glass and leatherette, I could slow it down. Frame it and slice it into distinct frames—moments that could be preserved and revisited, allowing memory to more clearly persist.
A second stroke of luck that year crystallized my commitment to the craft. While running an errand for the football team I discovered a treasure trove of forgotten photography gear buried beneath boxes of surplus football helmets and padding. I exhumed photography equipment I'd never seen before, or that the school as an institution remembered it even owned. There were enlargers. Bell and Howell 16mm movie cameras...filters, timers, lights and trays.
That year, slowly, in the absence of a teacher, but with inherited and rediscovered equipment, I began to teach myself how to become a photographer. How to compose. How to process. How to print.
At the time, as hard as it can be now to imagine, taking a photo wasn't easy, instant, or inexpensive. They were precious.
Each photo I took in that initial burst of naive creativity were golden.
The backdrop photography on this site is pulled from that era of my work.
Photography has been a through-line in my life since 1992, both personally and professionally. Thematic sets of my work spanning nearly 30 years can be found below.
I can be booked directly through the website, and relish the chance to help people tell their stories through photos…a thousand words at a time.
