During years working as a photojournalist for the Baltimore Sun and Associated Press, I accumulated a large body of work documenting people and events. These images represent single moments within larger photo essays commenting on the human condition. The nature of the work itself, to me, was a living documentation of what the day to day can become or be perceived as in the public's eye. I felt I was retelling unseen human experiences that would otherwise be hidden or forgotten and making them known or understood, or more simply, remembered. This was a formative moment in my career that has embedded itself in the mindset behind all of my images.

Sometimes the addition of movement or audio could make a piece stronger or tell the story from a more honest perspective. I believe that hearing from the voice of the subject themselves often carries a message with more weight than an image telling a story with a single, silent moment. Being able to offer stories as the person sees them or wishes to share them is an important part of the job. By using multimedia platforms, we are able to share entirely first person accounts. The first person account becomes a portrait that shows the viewer what lies beneath the surface.

So much of the work that I do is wound up in a community that I can find a sense of home or familiarity in. In my life I have been able to travel and document people and places with fresh eyes, and on in these travels I try to bring my sense of intimacy and familiarity onto a much more global platform. I am attempting to make what is personal universal because, as I have come to understand it, success often comes from that ability to translate personal vision onto a much larger canvas. Coming back from a trip allows me to examine my roots a bit deeper, and understand further why I do what it is that I do. By experiencing other places the most ordinary of details that are often overlooked by someone too at home in a place can reemerge as the unique traits and exceptional qualities that make it what it is. Getting the opportunity to step back and come back to a place with fresh eyes keeps my work honest and clear.

My goal here is to create a body of images that can articulate what a place is, to give it a visual vocabulary to identify itself with. Documentation comes with the craft; if I push the button, I have documented something. The struggle here is in finding the right places and the right moments that not only document, but help to define a place. What stands out, and what is unique- what could possibly allow a stranger to have a better grasp on the heart and nature of a place. I wish to focus on and celebrate the iconography that allows people to put the pieces together for themselves.

The camera can exist as the ultimate audience by reflecting a person back to themselves and displaying what makes them unique in this world. In this respect I often think back to what a mentor used to say about a portrait photographer's true job: to give people their dignity. I have given weight to appropriately representing who these people are within their communities, and how they have helped to form the culture they are a part of.
To use the camera as both a mirror and a window into the lives and worlds of others is a way to look at this craft philanthropically. This body of work allows me to give back and truly focus on celebrating people and the human landscapes that they have created. In the process, it is my hope that I can offer some perspective into our culture.

Portraits of the often overlooked people who produce our food.

The agricultural industry is filled with innovative and newsworthy developments and projects. Having grown up in this industry, I find it important to comment on and share what it is going through; how those involved are succeeding as well as how they are struggling. Many of the processes used to get consumers their products would go unrecorded if there weren’t someone to take an interest in sharing it with the world. Agriculture is incredibly important, and I am in an advantageous position to be a translator between the community of producers and the community of consumers.

The luxury of time is hard to acquire with a print unattributed to a space or shown without context. Galleries allow for a pause in the rapid consumption of imagery. It’s a safe space for art to exist as it is intended. In another context, without the walls of the gallery and an audience willing to give it a chance to exist, the piece would not hold up. These images are created to affect the audience as much as they are to stimulate or bewilder. They equally partner the process and craft behind photography with content and delivery. The print as it hangs in a gallery space is a physical object; a separate thing existing with the advantage of time, and it is this experience that separates the process for me. With these luxuries I am free to explore the process of photography and the nature of aesthetic imagery. In this process I can engage in photography as an end in itself rather than a medium used to tell a story; it is the techniques in their purest form, the roots of the craft.

I take images in the hopes that they will cast a shadow through history, that they will be remembered or retold. Books are some of the oldest and most lasting forms of human documentation; books leave a mark. While gallery walls get taken down and prints fade or are lost, a book is one cohesive body of work that stays together, intact and able to be viewed the way the creator meant it to be over and over.
This is some of the most important work that I do. I have illustrated eight published books with my imagery. By partnering with text in this way I am able to reach a much wider and more diverse audience than I can access with my photographs alone. I am a storyteller, and with this medium I can tell the whole story, and celebrate the moments I am representing fully and entirely.

Legacy is an interesting concept as a photographer, maybe its that my ego is too large for just one career, but more likely there is an uncorruptable sense of accomplishment in sharing the knowledge I have accumulated with the ones willing to listen. In that way, part of my theory or technique can live on long after I'm gone. It is a large part of my business to reach out and be a part of something outside of my own success. My success becomes our success in the team we have built at Remsberg Inc. My experience becomes the lessons of others in the contests I judge and for the interns that I take on. And simply put, the sense of community and encouragement we can give to one and other by reaching out and celebrating the work being done is remarkable.