With the exception of War Storm and Eden, my galleries show only samples of larger series.
Southside (1977-82, 1985-92)
An old friend once called me a "prodigal son of the Southside". I left many times, returned, welcomed by my father, a legendary raconteur and entrepreneur, always with my camera loaded with black and white, wide-angle lens locked on tight. In 2020, I scanned hundreds of negs, chose fifty, made 12x18" pigment prints and placed them in folios for delivery in 2021 to the Columbus State University Archives.
Drive to Merna Station (1983)
One afternoon in Normal, Illinois, my first experience of the great plains, and the last time I saw my late friend Bill, a Hardy Scholar and operatic tenor. These images are all from one twenty-four exposure roll of film.
Brownie Hawkeye (1984)
In the early 1980s I struggled with depression. My wife Nathalie and me and my son Gabriel lived in Swarthmore, Pa., where Nat taught English at Swarthmore College. In 1984, frustrated with my photography, I put away my 4x5 Speed Graphic, and in an attempt to simplify my life, started using a black plastic Brownie Hawkeye camera that I bought at a thrift store for two dollars. I was fortunate to find ten rolls of outdated 620 panchromatic BW film and a couple of packages of egg-sized flash bulbs at a nearby family-owned camera store. I printed the 6x6cm negatives at the Wallingford Arts Center, where I ran a photography program. In 1985, forty of the snapshot-sized prints, along with fifteen pages from my journal, were exhibited as Brownie Hawkeye: A Photographer's Journal at the Book Trader Gallery in Philadelphia, Pa.
Dreamers (1993-4)
In 1993, my teenage son Gabe and I were living in a part of my parents' large home in Columbus, Ga., and I was experimenting with a Polaroid Land Camera, Model 180, that I loaded with Polaroid Positive/Negative B/W Film. I used this camera and film to photograph girls and women that Gabe and I knew. I collaborated with my models on clothing and poses, based on their dreams and my own.
Spirits of Bonaventure (1996-1998)
Inspired by John Berendt's novel Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, my wife Brenda and I visited Bonaventure Cemetery in Savannah, Ga., and spent most of two days there, her sketching, me photographing the statues that live among the ancient live oaks, hung with Spanish Moss.
Forgotten Coast (2003-2006)
"Forgotten Coast" is a marketing slogan for the less popular part of Florida's panhandle, including the area around Apalachicola, Florida. It has additional meaning for me: like most families in our area, we spent time every summer on the Gulf Coast, and because I have poor long-term memory, I recall only fragments of those childhood experiences. I started photographing the area in 2003, mainly with medium format digital, in black and white, more recently in color with a DSLR.
War Storm (2003)
Faith and inspiration are essential components of my creative life, and in the Spring of 2003, when war with Iraq was inevitable and one thunderstorm after another crashed through our area, both were in short supply. On a Monday afternoon, as storm clouds crowded the sky and our neighbors took cover, I loaded my camera case and tripod into my van and drove away. My first stop was Whitesville Methodist Church, five minutes from home. I sped from one old church to another, racing the rain, with lightning flashing and thunder booming like distant artillery. Strong winds blew black clouds across the sky, alternately blotting the sun, then breaking apart to let it streak through. I found myself hurrying to set up my gear, then waiting for the moment when sun, sky, light and shadow coalesced into an image that spoke to me. I finished up at Midway Baptist, just as the first drops fell. My metadata, recorded with my exposures, shows that I spent 52 minutes in all, at three different churches. The final image, Angel, Midway Cemetery, was captured the following November. The statue marks the grave of a young woman who died tragically.
Bethlehem Road (1998-2010)
For more than ten years, I photographed along Bethlehem Road, which snakes through rural Marion County, Georgia. James Stubbs, my father-in-law, lived there on his ancestral land, where the heart pine cabin he grew up in still stands. Aaron Stubbs, family historian and heavy truck driver, whose backyard is a graveyard for lost vehicles, lives one mailbox down the road. In this work I create a personal mythology from the memories of a city-bred boy, awed by the mysteries I encountered on visits to my mother's family's home place deep in the Alabama countyside.
Fallen (2012)
When others lift their eyes to the brightly colored leaves of fall, I look down. I am not sure what this reveals about me, but as I age, I appreciate the leathery and lace-like textures, age spots and the faded pigments of the fallen leaves. These images of carefully chosen leaves from my yard were photographed on my front steps, in bright sun, on a curved piece of glossy white paper.
Forgotten Coast: Color (2014-2015)
By 2014, my medium format digital camera was long gone, along with some of my vigor, and I was shooting with a pro-level Nikon DSLR. My work was changing too; I am a small camera guy again, more mobile and more inclined to use my original color captures. But I haven't lost my love for old Florida.