NIGHTSCAPES

Do not assume anything about our world. The natural world, the human presence, always in flux becomes a confluence of energies creating the quality of the photo’s own inner life. I hope the viewer returns to my images again and again for something more, for a certain inexplicable quality of transcendence. I shoot using only available light—no digital manipulation—in my quest to capture the unique resonance of the subject, so I scout out atmosphere with high moisture content. But just as often the shot simply emerges, surprising me. For example, the host of “Cypress Trees” appeared as I happened to look behind me and there they were, looming above a Tolkienesque shadow world. People often can’t believe those trees—in that  magical setting—are near LAX. This is when I sense that the image is more than an unusual formation cast within interesting qualities of light; that it captures the core of feeling which caught me off guard.

Night images have the potential to be psychologically rich, suggestive of the unconscious territory of dreams, mythology and the symbolic. “Bus, Westchester, LA” or “Eagle Rock 1” evoke a strong awareness of unconscious territory, rich with inexpressible, even primal experience. They can create flashes of recognition in the viewer which are simultaneously enchanting and disturbing, viscerally at work inside the viewer in ways similar to the “deep image” poetry of someone like Gary Snyder who exposes the inner life of things with words. The vivid (coral) “Tree, Santa Monica” can simultaneously evoke beauty and danger, fore-grounded against a windowless building where a ghosted human figure leans near the lit doorway. I would like the juxtaposition of serene natural beauty with the noise of human presence to suggest the tentative relationship between ourselves and our Earth. It could be the paradox of our existence—where vulnerability illuminates power, dance is stillness, and darkness reveals more than it obscures.

[characters and spaces: 1997]