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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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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Trains From My Youth is a selection of some of my favorite train pictures I took as a young person growing up in northeastern Ohio. Some of the pictures have a date stamp showing the month, day and year the images were burned onto the film which I left in tact for the nostalgia I have for that period in my life. I spend a lot of time looking at pictures I made in my youth, reflecting on the past and augmenting my memory while comparing the past to where we are at in history today.
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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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My Archive 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.