WHY?

    My father was an Iowa farmer and lived in one rural area all his life. He did not like cities because he hated the density. I eventually understood that Dad was afraid of cities, a function of his traumatic experiences with violence, as an infantryman in cities in France and Germany in World War II.

     I enjoyed the rural landscape and was also fascinated by cities. Eventually I realized that I had internalized my father's fears. I explore this complex, sometimes confusing, experience in urban environments: a joyful curiosity and fascination simultaneous with some level of fear. I fill the frame with information because of what I feel in the city landscape, a closing in of the spaces. Simultaneous joy and fear is my subject matter, depicted often with people and objects cropped at the frame's edges, layering of spaces, complimentary and discordant colors in the same frame, and depictions of the many sources of movement.

    So, I photograph to better understand the world and myself. I explore to reveal meaning from America’s complex urban social landscape. Layers of people, commerce, fashion, industry, history, traffic, and advertising show our most common intersections. If I do my job well, showing tension between the landscape’s chaos and order, this record will be useful to others today and to posterity for finding meaning in their lives.

    I am influenced by Bob Dylan’s decades of persistent creativity, William Eggleston’s color quest, Helen Levitt's human empathy, and Walker Evans’s lyrical documentary style of looking at the world.

WHAT?

    I am a street/documentary photographer! I have completed several self-assigned and publicly funded art projects. Some examples: In Wisconsin I completed two public art grant projects: "A Photographic Survey of the Physical and Social Environment of Downtown Madison" and “Our Land-Our Lives” an extended photo-essay on the 1980's family farm crisis in the Midwest. I have continued to exhibit my photo artworks extensively as indicated on my website. In 2013 Lens Culture featured my “AMERICOLOR” work on their website as part their favorite portfolios that year. My photos are in several public collections and are shown prominently in an important photographic art history publication, "Bystander, A History of Street Photography".