Artist Statement:

"My commitment to photography was actually preceded, and influenced, by a lifelong interest in film, music, and literature, and it was a few years after my undergraduate career that I became interested in the power of the singular photographic image. My involvement coalesced during a life-changing, six-month journey through Europe and North Africa, inspired by a retrospective exhibit of Henri Cartier-Bresson at the Tate Gallery in London, and began in earnest with the birth of my first son, Seamus, in 1979. Although primarily self-taught for the first twelve years of my involvement with photography, I studied with some of the world’s foremost photographers at the Maine Photographic Workshops during the 1990s. In 1998, I enrolled at the Savannah College of Art and Design, and earned a Master of Fine Arts Degree in Photography in 2002, while also studying filmmaking and painting. For the past 4 years I have taught photography at Rhode Island College as part of the Art Department Adjunct Faculty, and in the Rhode Island School of Design Continuing Education Program. I have recently returned from a year-long teaching assignment in Beijing, China, at the Beijing Institute of Clothing Technology, where I also worked on professional assignments and personal work.

Primarily utilizing 35mm and medium-format black & white materials, I have also employed the diminutive Holga camera for much of my personal work. Known for its unique, ‘lo-fi’ imaging capabilities, I have been able to adapt and utilize this plastic camera as a tool that is capable of rendering great detail and a subtle palette of tones and emotions, representing a radical departure from what this camera is known for. More recently, I have used digital capture to my expand on my interests and increase the artistic and marketing possiblities for old and new work.

Various bodies of work range from numerous travel experiences to my own backyard. Most notably, my work has focused on twenty-five years of photographs of my family - my two sons, Seamus and Sean - and various friends and acquaintances. Over the years, my work has steadily progressed from simple observations of those around me, to images concerned with interpersonal relationships and mature, often confrontational, intimacy. A close physical and emotional awareness has always informed the work, even within the landscapes, and a distinct connection between photographer and subject (and eventually the viewer) has become of prime importance. In all of this work, honesty and passion are paramount; where subject matter plays the most important role in viewer response, and from that I believe that a certain revelation is not only possible, but also inevitable. My most recent work in Beijing involved experiements with fashion photography, as well as expanding on the environmental portraiture and documentary nature of my earlier work.

Undeniably, a life-long interest in travel, and the curiosity that summons it, has strongly influenced my sensibilities. I see travel as a metaphor for the personal exploration apparent in all of this imagery, and I have attempted to translate the perception of my experience into a visual narrative of emotionally-connected imagery, based on the reality of the world in front of me. The work has always explored the most unique aspects of photography: the apparent detail that photographic materials are capable of; the moment in which each image is made manifest; and the perception, or interpretation, of reality through the photographic image. Rather than creating tableaux to photograph, I am concerned with the real world where I attempt to capture moments of interest, and the imagery that results continually examines ideas of longing, irony, human relations, and intimacy; work that arises from a prolonged involvement with subject matter; work that attempts to confirm a sensitivity to the vagaries of existence, to the incompleteness and frustration of knowledge itself - an intense curiosity of the world around me, and the examination of my place within it."

List of Pieces:

1. Spring Snow, County Mayo: Ireland - 1982

2. Untitled Striped Sheet Series, Savannah

3. Bernard, Kenya

4. Skulls, Kenya

5. Roman Statue, Vaison-la-Romaine

6. Courtyard, Gigondas