LANDSCAPE, ONGOING. (20) Optical and digital photographs.

Using 6x7 and 4x5 optical cameras, these photographs are from an ongoing series of landscapes from different countries and local regions.

CHISINAU, MOLDOVA, 2006/2007. (37) digital photographs.

I could see the westward gaze everywhere, and no doubt it must be hard to resist, with neighboring Romania having just entered the EU, and consumerism raging throughout most of the former USSR. As I witnessed the country cautiously ponder its identity on the one hand, and hurtle towards consumerism on the other, I sensed a schism between the two primary cultural factions I percieved; those who identify as Russian, and the other who identify as Romanian. Interestingly, it was the Russian Moldovans who spoke the best English and seemed poised to embrace the Western onslaught, while Romanian Moldovans, typically speaking little or no English, appeared cautious, more committed to coming to terms with what it means to be Moldovan. When the Moldovan economy stabilizes, and the country becomes more politically viable, I can only hope that as world financial markets stagger, Moldova will stave off the pitfalls of consumer-capitalist mania, and remain grounded in its forging independence.

These digital photographs were taken while I was visiting as an artist in residence during the Fall of 2006, and while contributing to the Found Footage Workshop during the Fall of 2007 at the K:SAK Center for Contemporary art in Chisinau.

LIFE OF SIGNS, 2003. (26) 35mm optical photographs.

"It is not a new cryptography that we need, especially when it consists of replacing one cipher by another less intelligible, but a new diagnostics, a science that can determine the meaning of things for the life that surrounds them. It will have, of course, to be trained on signification, not pathology, and treat with ideas, not with symptoms. But by connecting incised statues, pigmented sago palms, frescoed walls, and chanted verse to jungle clearing, totem rites, commercial inference, or street argument, it can perhaps begin at last to locate in the tenor of their setting the sources of their spell" -- Clifford Geertz

These photographs were taken with a 35mm optical point and shoot camera, which I favored at the time over larger more cumbersome formats.

THE SPIRIT IN DESIRE, 2001. (18) Polaroid SX-70 photographs.

Do the material objects that support our desires for satisfaction, comfort, status, and happiness bring with them a functional set of beliefs that transcend the material? Are our desires inextricably linked to forces beyond our control? Does mythology exist in contemporary culture? If so, what symbolic role does the material play in it's construction?

Most of these photos were part of a graduate thesis that investigated the interplay between meaning and symbolic material culture in contemporary society. A Polaroied SX-70 camera was used for it's immediacy and hyper-saturated look.