Living in Portland, Maine, since 1970, I've been photographing the intersection between the man-made and man-altered landscape and the marks we leave on our environment. I've always wondered about the marks we make on our surroundings, whether it's graffiti or scars left from quarrying, the objects we place in our environment or how we make structures that settle into the landscape. These marks are really about the people who made them. Why do we need to alter our surroundings? Why do we need to mark our territory?
My MFA in FIlm and Photography honed my editing and sequencing skills. I like to see how my photographs interact with each other on the wall or in the pages of a book. FIlm taught me the value of using the still frame in a very fluid manner. Because of my grad school film experience, the sequencing of my images, whether on the wall or in a book, is very important to me. I don't necessarily think in single images, but rather how one image can either inform or transform the following images. How do my photos talk to each other? At times I've combined my images with text to expand on or alter the content of my photographs.
The act of making photographs is at times physical, as I move, almost dance, around my subjects. At other times the process puts me into a trance-like state as my hand, eye, movement, and the object of my attention become connected. Making photographs is both the most difficult work, and the most fun work, that I can imagine ever doing.
I began sailing at age 15. Using my boat as a platform has gotten me to remote areas often not easily accessible. Making photographs and sailing have nurtured each other and combined, have given me a full, rich life. Being offshore, the light, the colors, the clarity of the atmosphere, the sound, the vastness, the aloneness, certainly have heightened my awareness of my place in the natural world. How big that natural world is compared to me, one individual. It has also shown me that how we interact with our world can and does have a profound impact on our environment. I am in awe of our world, but I have also grown to have a great respect for this planet we have inherited.
In 1972 I was asked to create a four year program leading to the BFA degree in photography, the first in Maine, at the Maine College of Art and Design. I taught at the college from 1970 to my retirement in 2008.