Sensualight Photography

Artist Statement

Art is an exploration of who we are as human beings. As I create a photograph, I'm feeling out ideas, looking to convey through the medium of light my thoughts about the world: as it is, as it should be, and the harmony or dissonance between the two. To me, two of the most compelling issues of our time are our relationships with the natural world and with each other, both of which are, sadly, often dysfunctional.

In my work you'll see humans finding peace in nature, or striving with varying degrees of success to seek it out in the concrete canyons of our cities. Like so many artists throughout history, I work with nudity because it represents us at our most elemental, the part of ourselves that is truly who we are, with all of the artifice of culture stripped away. There is a sensuality to it, too, because at our core we are sensual beings, even if that sensuality has been numbed and sublimated by society.

Likewise, it is only when we peel away the layers of culture and society that we may see each other as we truly are, without pretext or expectation. Race, gender, identity, age, ability -- all fall away as irrelevant. And yet, to portray one's true identity in the modern world is still a radical act.

Biography

I've been making photographs since 1986, when I spent a summer working at Grand Canyon National Park and my grandfather gifted me his trusty Pentax K1000. When my son was born in 1998, I fell in love with the challenge of portrait photography. There's a quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson that describes it well: "The soul in man is not an organ... but a light... From within or from behind, a light shines through us upon things, and makes us aware that we are nothing, but the light is all." My task as a photographer is to capture light in the form of digital pixels; but my work as an artist is to capture a glimpse of the soul shining through. About a decade ago, I started focusing on figure photography, mostly in nature, with themes of reconnecting with that part of us that is natural and wild. My work also strives to represent diversity in all forms, and to represent the beautiful diversity of human sensual experience. My photos have been exhibited in galleries and festivals throughout the United States and Europe.

Exhibition History (CV)