Artist Statement
I photograph what remains
—not with the urgency of a documentarian, but with the slowness of someone listening to places that speak softly, if at all. My work begins with form: line, shadow, the hum of a horizon, the weight of a blank sign. Beneath the surface geometry is something quieter, something unsettled. A question that lingers: What happened here?
I travel the American road not to simply chase nostalgia, but to observe what time has altered and what it has erased. Many of the places I photograph once pulsed with life, good economies, distinct personalities. Now they drift in a kind of suspended stillness, bypassed by interstates and progress. I don’t seek ruin, exactly. I look for what’s overlooked—the fading heartbeat of the mom and pop, the quiet dignity of a shuttered storefront, the last echo of a sign that once meant something.
The less I know going in, the more present I become. I move through these places like a stranger listening for echoes—moments that feel known, even when they aren’t. It’s a kind of recognition that doesn’t come from memory, but from myth. An impression of an America I might have glimpsed in film, or imagined as the backdrop in a Steinbeck or Kerouac novel—the corner diner, a local motel, an old GMC pickup truck —now suspended in a quieter, lonelier time.
These aren’t personal landmarks. They’re shared ones, or what’s left of them. My work is about noticing what’s fading from view, not just physically but psychologically. I photograph these places because they feel like they belong to all of us, even if we’ve never been there.
The road is where it begins. There’s a ritual to it—not rigid, but dependable. I load my Hasselblad 500 and head out without a fixed plan, following a route loosely drawn and always open to revision. Medium format film slows me down in a way I crave. It forces Patience. Precision. And above all, Attention. I use film not to look backward, but because of how it renders light with softness and truth.
Serendipity plays a central role. The photographs I trust most often appear in liminal moments—between destinations, between thoughts—when I’m not searching but simply noticing. Some of my favorite images came from wrong turns, roadside stops, or pauses I couldn’t explain at the time.
When I eventually return from the road the darkroom is its own world. The chemical scent, the moment the negative reveals what was hidden, it’s all part of the process. There’s joy in the delay, in not knowing what I’ve captured until many days or weeks later. It preserves the mystery, and in some ways, honors it.
Though I rarely include people in my photographs, absence can be its own kind of portrait. What’s missing is often just as revealing as what remains—a shuttered motel in Baker, a rusty gas pump in Adrian, a forgotten Main Street in Tucumcari. These aren’t neutral images—they carry weight. They speak quietly of systems and choices, of progress and erasure.
I don’t make work to prove a point, but I’m not indifferent to what’s unfolding. The landscapes I photograph are shaped over time by decisions—economic, cultural, social. The details like the faded sign, the empty storefront, the silence of a place built for people tend to hold more truth for me than explanation could.
In a way, the restraint is part of the message. If there’s any urgency in the work, it comes from what’s unsaid.
This work is a way of staying present in a world that’s always moving past itself. I follow the road not to chase answers, but to live inside the questions. The camera helps me listen, film helps me wait and the places I find remind me that meaning doesn’t always arrive loudly. Sometimes it lingers at the edge of a frame, or inside the silence between things.
I’m not documenting the past. I’m photographing what the present has chosen to forget, and in that forgetting, I try to make space for seeing again—with patience, with care, and with a kind of reverence for what endures, even as it disappears.