My studio practice has been to organize my images into series that explore various ways to abstract reality by photographic means. For part of 2018, though, my visual work has become focused on national politics.

In May, when the Trump administration began separating immigrant children from their parents and families at the US/Mexico border, the political atmosphere in this country became so dark and disturbing, that I could not work. I never thought that, in my lifetime, I would see such a thing happen in the United States. I needed to do something, however small, to express my outcry over the traumatic separations. Since I am an artist, a photographer, the most potent way for me to express my feelings is with the visual image.

With this series of twenty-five photographs, I do not remain silent.

The Photographic Essences portfolio delves deep into the abstraction that is a result of my camera movement at the time of capture. I used larger, freer movements of the camera in order to free compositions of photographic detail and to create in them a softening of form and blending of color. In some images, the subject matter was already moving and it suggested the movement pattern for the camera. Throughout this portfolio, I wanted to express the painterly attributes of a photographic image.

The images in the Patina Painting portfolio achieve their abstraction by avoiding context. The compositions are found in the painted metal surfaces of old trucks and they mimic abstract expressionist paintings. They are painterly photographs of paint. This mimicry, the lack of context, and the large scale of the photographs combine to create this type of photographic abstraction.

The images of this portfolio use methods of obscuring the subject matter to achieve their photographic abstraction. The photographs visually fuse the two realities of “this” side and “that” side, and the overlapping compositions create the abstraction. The subject matter on the other side of the obscuration adds tantalizing elements to the composition. It is the part of the composition that becomes most abstracted.

When I am denied access to places where I would like to photograph, I begin to compose my photographs using the barriers preventing my access as compositional material. This can make me feel fortunate, indeed, that I am on my particular side of the barrier. Without the barrier, I would have missed some wonderful images.

As photographic images approach black and white, the focus is on texture and tonal range. The images of this portfolio stay securely rooted in the exploration of texture and tone with color becoming a mere accent in the composition. Abstraction is accomplished by my moving camera capture techniques and adds the energy of motion to these images. The photographs of this portfolio are some of my more abstract images having only a tenuous connection to photographic reality.

In 1987, American vision scientist Irving Biederman theorized that human beings mentally break down images into simple geometric shapes in order to make sense of them. These simple geometric shapes are called geons.
Geons are used to anchor the abstraction in this portfolio of photographs. The geons are embellished and softened by my moving camera capture. The context of these photographs is not clear and the photographic detail is blurred, but the geons allow the viewer a safe platform, an organizing structure, from which they can investigate the abstraction of the images.

Speed. Life today moves along at an ever-quickening pace. Visual artists, affected by the accelerated tempo of their lives, respond in a visual way. They create art where the fast pace of life is made visible.

It has become evident to me that my recent photographic work is strongly influenced by the accelerated pace of modern life. This influence extends not only to the images themselves but also to my capture and field techniques.

My camera, these days, is often moving when I capture an image and I have developed a series of techniques that I call moving camera capture. The images of this portfolio exemplify one aspects of this technique: the ability to simulate movement in the image, the sense of something racing by us. In the process of revealing this speed, the photographic composition is abstracted.

Superimposed layers of reality, the distortion of reflection, and the framing of the composition all combine to photographically abstract these images of automobiles. One’s focus in the image vacillates between two realities: the reflecting surface of the vehicle itself and that of the landscape reflection carried on the vehicle's surface. I love this restless abstraction. It is a familiar and accessible kind of abstraction because we all have seen reflections in cars, but the photographs of this portfolio make us wonder about, and long to see more clearly, the realities from which the photographs were captured. The abstraction causes a lingering visual question about both the vehicle and the landscape.

Since a steady camera is not required for my moving camera capture, I am able to photograph in environments where the light is very low. In these low light environments, my camera motion has a painterly and flattening effect. The movement-created textures in the images can be very complex because the slow shutter speed enables more choreography of camera movements. This portfolio is designed to have a theatrical effect, like landscapes illuminated and set on a stage.

The motion, surface texture, and reflective nature of water create abstraction of a photographic image. The organizing principles of perspective are distorted and landscapes reflected in water look strangely unfamiliar. There are many layers of abstraction at work here. The moving, distorted landscape reflection interacts with the water’s surface texture, and it is also possible to look through them both to the see things underneath the water. All these layers combine and are frozen in a photographic image. The photographs have a painterly quality about them with colors blending and “brushstrokes” being formed by wind on the water’s surface. I like it that the water has a hand in the photographic composition. In the time it takes for the camera’s shutter to be released, the composition that was seen in the viewfinder has changed.