Before I got into photography and attended ArtCenter. I studied Art at the University of California at Santa Barbara. There I was introduced to Barnett Newman, Gerhard Richter, Chinese Landscape painting, Graffiti, and Dirty “Street” Graphics.

Outside the world of painting, Inspiration and major influences for this work can be attributed to photographers Gregory Crewdson, Robert and Sarah Parke-Harrison, Joel-Peter Witkin, Keith Carter, William Mortensen, Michael Kenna, and James Fee.

I like all of the above for various reasons. Crewdson for his storytelling ability. The Parke-Harrison’s for their epic sense of scale and imagination. Michael Kenna for his mastery of composition. The quiet and haunting sense of mood in Fee and Witkin. Which a lot of the distressing and visual decay I employ can be attributed to. Even though I don’t always enjoy their subject matter, they always make you question your way of seeing.

I have always been interested in the subjectivity of seeing. Like looking at inkblots or watching clouds. Visually I try to construct my images in a metaphorical and abstract way so that the viewers imagination if free to explore and derive there own thoughts and conclusions independent from my own. Which is why up until this point the protagonists of my images have been plant life. I like to use flora because for the most part it has no singular inherent meaning. And what meaning a particular species may have is typically not universal to all cultures or regions.

The versatility of plant life as subject is crucial. It allows me to play upon the basic themes that I construct each image around. Every time I pick up the camera I’m thinking about; life, death, hope, and conflict. Hope is the possibility for something else, not necessarily something better and yet not necessarily something worse. Whether one is better than the other depends on one’s perception. It’s the uncertainty of the situation that gives the image tension and creates conflict. A lot of the time Ill try to accentuate this by my use of competing elements within the composition and/or contrasting colors.

It’s very important that all of the elements of the image are real. The colors, scratches, and props all exist on set. I like the idea of taking the real and arranging it in such a way that reality is visually distorted, but not structurally. Because in truth my images are real places that did exist at one time, though they looked nothing like what you see now.

I choose to shoot with a 6x6 Hasselblad 503cw and a 120 CF mackro planar lens. I choose medium over large format because the handheld freedom of the camera allows me to move around the set much more easily while still maintaing an excellent negative size. There is so much back and forth in the composing and adjusting of the set in response to what I see behind the lens, that the Hasselblad allows me to accomplish this much more easily without distraction.