This selection is a small sample of various projects of mine.

It's been a while since I've returned from Antarctica and I still can't fathom having been there. It's like going to another planet. I've never been to another planet, but I imagine this is the closest I'll ever get to one. Ironically, being in Antarctica is probably the closest I'll ever feel to Earth. The experience has fostered images of absolutes. Vast landscape, infinitesimal human. Our dire threat to nature, and the delicate polar ecology. Navigating the treacherous Drake Passage, our small boat at the mercy of fifty foot waves. Life, death. The list goes on. It's humbling. It's a place where the minuscule and the monumental are mutually epic. People ask me, "Why go to Antarctica?". There are many reasons. Some of which I have yet to discover. I went to Antarctica because soon it will be a very different place. In the past few years, ice shelves as massive as countries have broken off the continent and are melting into the ocean. Death and Beauty. Antarctica is dying. Such an unlikely and complex place. I had to go, absorb, and tell a story.

Machines, computers, robots don’t think, they obey. A parallel of our current and future relationship with technology. Robots trying to be human. Humans trying to be robots. Humans striving to be a part of a whole, becoming one collective thought. The robot is a machined human. A human that has been drowned in its technology, becoming one with it. It has become the object of its own obsession.

ESPEJO

My grandfather passed in July of 2014. He left behind a legacy of hard work, and a complicated family. He also left behind his farmland, La Gloria, just outside of Bogotá. He spent 40 years developing to what it is now. A fertile, beautiful land. I’ve been connected to La Gloria since the day I was born. After my grandfather’s passing I decided to dive into my first autobiographical project. Having photographed for two years, I tried to make sense of my images, La Gloria, and my family. I’ve spent my entire life trying to make sense of it, but now realize that is a lost cause. Titling the project and each image was going to make or break it. I realized that giving each image a specific title is just me attempting to make sense of my family. Make sense? In an attempt to let go, I wrote about my life experience of La Gloria. I then lined up the finished text with my sequenced photographs. Viewing the sequence, the titles reveal the entire text as originally written. Some title/image combinations, I might never comprehend. Others resonate so much that it’s creepy. Either way, it is what it is. I didn’t try to make sense of my family with the titles. When photographing, writing, editing and sequencing, yes. When creating titles, no. I just let it be. Now all these titled images are as new to me as they are to anyone. Revealing whatever my mind tries to make of it, or just accepting them as they are. Like a Espejo (Spanish for “mirror”). Not a bad way to make peace with family.

Ice. Land. Fire. Motion. Metamorphic. Technological. Volatile. Outlandish. Lush. Oceanic. Mythical. Alive. Thinking of Iceland, I’m lost for words and the ability to think in complete sentences. One of the few places in the world I have visited that undeniably has a powerful pulse of its very own. The land breathes and evolves right before my eyes. The land is an organism in itself. Temperamental volcanoes, mighty glaciers, the rhythm of the ocean. It’s a language of time.

To a degree, Icelandics know. Many are aware of nature’s fragility and power. It’s power to create, destroy, transform, and transcend. This is a time when humanity has the choice to be enlightened, or disciplined by nature. Although part of me thinks nature has already made up its mind.

This is one of those projects that I can’t quite put my finger on. It’s elusive. Experiencing the world I see a connection, tension, a conversation between things and the space they inhabit. I see spaces within space, geometry, animated expanse that is apparently empty. The thing is, I can’t explain these relationships and connections. I just know they are there. We each have a personal way of relating to and perceiving space. Space can exist by the lines, walls, and physical boundaries. It can also exist by how our minds make connections and divisions by how we interpret human behavior, physical form, personal experience, and countless other variables. Perception of space is constantly in flux and evolves with us. One day we see a division between a rock and a tree. The next day we might see how they connect. Space changed. Choreographed speedways, empty airspace, a puddle staring at the sky, they converse with that thing I can’t quite put my finger on.

The  images are about awareness, or a lack of it. The images are not about the awareness of airliners in the sky, especially post 9/11. They're about the unawareness of our ability to really do something, great or small, about our times. They are what I would hope to be a “trigger” to a revolution. A catalyst.

I developed Oh Say Can You See a few years after 9/11. Back then I felt frustrated and terrified that our country was lost, mislead, and in real danger from ourselves and the onslaught of smoke and mirrors draped before our eyes. In the images of Oh Say Can You See, the people are oblivious to imminent danger of commercial aircraft swarming like bees overhead. Oh yes, terror, just let me finish my burrito and work on my tan first...

When experiencing this particular natural landscape, I cannot help notice a disconnect. Disconnect between people and their surroundings. Disconnect between people and other people. Disconnect between people and themselves. Sometimes it’s all pretty harmless. People just are how they are. No harm done. It is what it is. Other times that disconnect can lead to our discordance with nature.

When I think of “people & nature”, ideally I envision a person out in the wild loaded with sporting gear, exploring and becoming one with nature. It's a nice picture, and it happens in reality. It is a good thing. However, I can't help noticing how odd so many “normal” people can be in nature. Some choose to go in high heels, glued to their mobiles. Others may take the nature hike while sipping energy drinks out of brightly colored containers and getting their family picture taken with blank smiles that quickly disappear after the digital camera's beep (click). People become the landscape.

In one way or another, I'm one of them. Aren't we all?

It's hard to unravel how I see people in nature. My lack of an explanation is why I'm drawn to making images of it. More than actual statements about people in nature, I have questions. Sometimes when I observe it feels bizarre, odd. Other times it feels like something isn't right, something is off. Then there are moments of choreographed reality. I guess when it comes to people and nature, harmony and disfunction go hand in hand.

When experiencing something in extremes, it can be a challenge to see what is going on. A line, a shadow, an idea. In it’s extreme state, its essence might be revealed.

Why light and dark? Ever walked out of a dark theater into broad daylight? From a bright parking lot into a dark eye examination room? From an ear blistering rock concert into your near silent car? Your senses are either overwhelmed by… *sensing*, or by the lack of. We’ve all experienced this. This sensory wall of opposing extremes. You hit that wall from light to dark, (or dark to light), you feel blinded, struggling to make sense of form. As your senses gradually adapt, your brain begins to decipher the content. Generally speaking, photographers have historically put our technical prowess into accomplishing a “correct” exposure (cue in, eye roll). Ansel Adams and his development of the Zone System is a prime example of this. With The Political Landscape I wanted to apply this approach, but from a different perspective. The actual viewing of the image is visceral and demanding experience. Visceral and demanding, not by content, but by the nature of the image and sequencing. Dark image followed by light image, followed by dark, light, and so on. Absence followed by abundance of light. Constantly challenging the senses to adapt and see the essential from the minimal. Forcing your brain to see when feeling blinded by light, or dark. A divisive experience… like politics. Experiencing something so extreme, it blinds. The only way to wrap our heads around the political idea is to actively force our minds to *listen* to the extreme and then maybe make some sense of it. Not necessarily agree, but at least listen and experience a sliver of empathy.

On another level, these images were inspired by drawing. More specifically, east Asian sumi-e ink drawings. The practice of bringing an image down to its bare essentials in the fewest brushstrokes possible. Sometimes, just a single brushstroke. Although sumi-e ink drawing and photography come from absolute opposite beginnings. With an ink drawing, one begins with a blank substrate. With a photograph, the real world, with infinite detail. With that in mind, my process was driven by eliminating as much detail as possible by pushing the image to an extreme “high key” or “low key” range. Add to that (or more accurately, subtract), I’ve gone black and white. So, I’ve eliminated all saturation/hue and mid tones. I’m left with just hints of what the original scene. Those hints offer a shift in perspective, shining light on details that would normally be missed or diluted by the full spectrum of information.