After more than five decades as photographer, I am looking at the vast
body of work I’ve created, discovering surprising relationships between
images. I have become interested in exploring those connections and it has
brought fresh energy and insights to my creative process.
With an abundance of material in a number of different categories, I began
by organizing images by subject and concept. Visual kinships emerged.
I turned to a format used by other contemporary artists, laying them out in a grid.
Sometimes I stuck to a single topic, for instance ‘1961 Ford F-100’.
For others I assembled a variety of seemingly unrelated images because I
saw a thread that linked them, for instance ‘Still Lives’. In both cases these
grids adhere to the aesthetic principles incorporating considerations of
design, color, and composition. Compiling and combining the images in this
way has taken them beyond their their original, independent identity.
‘Collections, Changing Direction’ has a synergy that makes the whole
greater, as the saying goes, than the sum of its parts, to express new
stories and themes
As ‘Collections’ appeared, they began to resonate at a deeper level. Rather
than being a retrospective of older works, they became new works with an
integrity all their own that represents my “gaze,” that is, my particular way
of looking at things and communicating fullness in light and impressions.
