In 1971 I went to Aspen, Colorado for summer photographic workshops at the Center of the Eye. Henri Cartier-Bresson and Garry Winogrand gave public lectures and I took classes that allowed use of darkrooms set up in the basement of the Jerome Hotel. It was a spectacular introduction to photography. I stayed for additional workshops that fall and completed a BFA in Photography at Utah State University in 1974. Later that year I moved to Santa Fe to work as an apprentice for Paul Caponigro, and following that as an apprentice and assistant for Laura Gilpin.
In 1982 I was one of twelve New Mexico photographers for the National Endowment for the Arts Photography Survey Grant, published as “The Essential Landscape” and in 1984 was part of a similar group survey for the Texas Historical Foundation Sesquicentennial Photography Survey, published as “Contemporary Texas: A Photographic Portrait”. In 1988 I received the Willard Van Dyke Memorial Grant and the King County Arts Commission 1% for Art Award in 1991. The work done for those grants is included on this site, but the majority of the work here has been done since 1991. Funding came from other grants, private commissions, commercial photography, and from elder and hospice care work.
The photographs have been exhibited extensively and are held in numerous collections including the National Museum of American Art, Washington, DC, the Humanities Research Center, University of Texas, Austin, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris.
With the exception of the Scarred Land images I’ve worked only in black and white and always with film. Darkroom work—the processing of film and the craft of making prints—has been a magical part of the photographic process for me, but 2010 I packed up my darkroom when I joined the Peace Corps. Most of my work is in color now and recently I began working with a digital studio that makes oversize prints after scanning my silver prints and does all my color printing.