Artist's Statement

Out of all the genres of photography, portrait photography interests me the most. I've spent a good amount of time trying to come to grips with it. We count on portraits to confirm what we know or think we know. And I'm curious about how that works. Is it the photographer, the sitter or the viewer that confirms? And, how much can be told from one image concerning the person or is each photographic portrait only a moment in time? These overlapping and ever changing dimensions create a fascinating complexity surrounding portraiture.

Often, unwittingly, a photographic portrait is assumed to function as a facsimile of an individual. But it is not so easy. There is a story told about Picasso that begins to speak to this. A gentleman sitting next to Picasso on a train begins a conversation and eventually asks Picasso why he doesn't paint portraits the way people really look. Picasso asks the man if he has a portrait of his wife with him. The man removes a picture of his wife from his wallet and hands it to Picasso. Picasso examines the photograph and says, "She's rather small and flat, isn't she."

All but one of these portraits begins by incorporating formal aspects of photographic portraiture. Then something is added to better inform the viewer as to the nature of the sitter. From time to time this work has troubled me. It was very difficult for me to mark the image even though the markings add another layer of meaning. But, is marking the work really necessary? Could it be that what remains unsaid is part of the individual's authenticity? That in these formal works the face alone is truer and elegant enough?

The red image, the nude, in this exhibition is quite different than the others. It takes us back to the beginning of my dilemma. I, the photographer, directed this sitter to strike a pose that suggested an idea to me. The question here becomes is this image about the photographer or the sitter or about the viewer deciphering the metaphor?

This work was made in a studio, with a medium format camera, shot on film, scanned into Photoshop, and printed on German water color paper. The photographs are all gliclee prints. A gliclee print is one that is generated from high-resolution digital scan and printed with archival quality inks.