Artist Statement
“Mythological Landscape” in a sense is my life’s work. My initiation into that concept began in my childhood, a stones throw from Route 66, while growing up on the Rio Puerco west of Albuquerque. My horizon was bounded on the north by the Jemez Mts., the east by the Sandias, the south by Ladron Peak and to the west by Mt. Taylor. At the center of this desert realm were the volcanos (now Petroglyph National Monument). I felt a kind of ill-defined presence in these landforms, but lacking any real cultural mythologies to explain that sense of presence, my brother and I invented personal mythologies, curious mixtures of science fiction laced with fragments of grade school history and our own very distant Native American ancestors to enliven the seeming desolation of this high desert realm. Our parents viewed this landscape as empty and lifeless, but we saw it as richly inhabited by the myths of our imaginations.
Many years later while studying anthropology and photography in college. I discovered the real mythologies which resided in many of these landforms and landscapes. In the writings of Alfonso Ortiz, Edward Dozier, Frank Waters and even Tony Hillerman, I found that these landscapes (and indeed most prominent landforms in the Southwest) were invested with the origin myths of various native cultures and indeed that even the nearby Route 66 and its tourist trading posts were caricatures of myths of the “cowboy and indian culture” of the American West. These myths, both experiential and researched, lie upon the landscape like a visceral patina to me. That patina is what I try to evoke with my images.
Process Statement
My process is pretty simple and straight forward. I believe in simple repeatable technique. Otherwise chasing rapidly changing light I will make too many mistakes in the field. Ninety eight percent of my work is with a 4x5 view camera and film. The negatives are then developed in Pyro and then either printed traditionally on silver gelatin paper or drum scanned and printed on silver gelatin paper or digitally with Piezography inks on various rag papers. Occasionally when out of town for a commercial shoot (where I would only have digital cameras with me) I may make a detour for personal images and use digital capture.
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