Photography provides me with a visual tool for exploration and communication. The ways we communicate with each other and the world around us have always been major points of interest and contention throughout my life (in addition to photography I have studied psychology and education). Because I choose to represent my observations about the world in images rather than in written essays, I have used photography in a variety of ways.
Not only do I make my own images, but I help others make their own as well. I have spent much of my life teaching photography in diverse settings. I have taught all age groups, from first-graders to nursing-home residents. I am currently the full-time photography professor at Marlboro College, and I am the co-founder of The In-Sight Photography Project,
and its Exposures Cross Cultural Youth Program, a non-profit program that teaches photography to adolescents regardless of their ability to pay.
Aging in White
During the early 1980's I spent four years photographing in nursing homes and a memorial home as a response to my grandfather being placed in one. By photographing in these places I attempted to confront my mixed emotions while also being helpful to others living there.
A View from the Rez These photographs were made while visiting Pine Ridge Reservation, tribal home of the Oglala Lakota Sioux People. Since 1992, I have been traveling there regularly to visit the Reddest family of Lost Dog Creek. As an outsider it is always an honor to be welcomed into their home.
Recycled Realities These images are representative of a body of work executed from 1998 through 2002. The images are found still-life photographs made from bales of scrap paper on its way to being recycled. Over this time period I was photographing with my friend and colleague Tom Young. We each made our own individual portfolios at the paper mill. A collaborative book of this work is scheduled to be published in 2006.
Nurturing / Nurturance Becoming a parent in the mid-1980's rekindled my enthusiasm in all aspects of life. Everything around me seemed new and meaningful, and I was struck by how vulnerable we are, and by how much influence we have in shaping the identities of future generations. I used my camera to immerse myself in these observations of childhood.
River Family My family and I live by a river, and we often spend summer days in the water. The images in this ongoing series are taken with an underwater camera during such cooling-off moments.
State Hospital While we were both experiencing major life changes, a colleague and I spent more than a year photographing the abandoned remains of the State Hospital for the Insane in Northampton, Massachusetts. We were literally locked into the building during cold winter days, photographing the evidence of more than one hundred years of residential psychiatric institutionalization.
Power & Glory These images were made during the first Gulf War. I was responding to the symbolism being portrayed by the concept of patriotism meaning you must support the flag and the soldiers fighting the war only by agreeing with the concept of the war.