Statements
Vanished in Time is an on-going series of long-exposure, 4x5 photographs of trains made primarily in the western United States. The blur of the train in motion contrasts with the much slower moving geology of the surrounding landscape, and challenges me to think about different ways I’ve experienced time in my life. As an adult, idling through the hours waiting for trains, like I did as a kid, feels like a luxury I can no longer afford. The abstraction created by the train in motion represents a wormhole or space-time conduit, of sorts, that I use to escape the constraints of maturity and revisit fond childhood memories of waiting by the tracks with my dad and brother, exposed to the elements and excited for the chance that at any moment a locomotive headlight could appear, approaching on the distant horizon.
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Trains of My Youth is a selection of photographs I took as a young person growing up in northeastern Ohio, rephotographed against the same landscape as it appears today, more than 30 years after the original in-laid photos were made. Some of the original photographs have a date stamp burned onto the film that I left in tact on the prints as a nostalgic reminder of how much, and how quickly, time has passed since that period in my life when I discovered my love for photography through watching trains.
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Chasing Trains in Cars examines roughly 30 years of road trips watching trains in different parts of America. Many of the pictures show locations along vague stretches of highway somewhere between mile markers, while others show evidence of civilization close by. All of them demonstrate a dependence on transportation as a means to shorten distance and accelerate time.
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Living in the Contemporary West I am haunted by the memory of this place as much as I am equally disoriented by the beauty of it’s landscapes. Having migrated here from where I grew up in Ohio, I roam the West with respect for its past as an observer in search of mythologies, absurdities, and greater understanding.
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Right of Way is a continuous study of railroad tracks from the places I go to watch trains. The width of standard gauge train track is 4 feet, 8 and a half inches. This measurement traces its origins all the way back to ancient Roman war chariots which were designed to accommodate two horses side by side, with the wheels spaced at what translates now to 4 feet, 8 and a half inches. English wagon designs adopted the equivalent of this measurement, before passing it along to American wagon designs which was eventually adopted by the American railroad. The purpose of this work is to bring your attention to how the past continues to live in the present.
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Collection of Things is an on-going pursuit to re-connect with objects related to the railroad that I’ve collected over the last 30-plus years as a train fanatic. Most of the objects I collected earlier in my life still reside at my parent’s house in Ohio where I grew up. So every year I go back to visit, I root through their attic and basement hoping to rediscover things I left when I moved away and bring back the treasures I find with me to Arizona where I live now.