Afterlife
Between Presence and Absence
Between the Fragile and the Decayed
Having grown up on the outskirts of a post-industrial city in Pennsylvania, I feel a connection to people and the land in deindustrialized cities and river valley towns in Connecticut, where I now live.
There is something familiar and haunting, for me, about these post-industrial landscapes. Where worn-out buildings now stand, I try to picture the tailor shop at the top of a hill in Reading, Pennsylvania, where my grandfather made his living and raised his family.
My interest is in documentation and abstraction—recording clues about the passage of time while engaging with light, shadow and shape. The mystery of each image is meant to remain; I invite each viewer to create a story based on what they see.
I recently re-engaged with photographs by John Divola and have found new meaning in his words: “I view photographs as artifacts of experience — traces of decisions made in time and space. My aim is not to illustrate ideas but to express a visual experience, a tension between presence and absence, between the fragile and the decayed.”
