2335 McCoy Road. An Epitaph. A Celebration. October 7 – November 4, 2011. Colourworks, Wilmington, DE.
Decompositions & other reflections. October 1, 2010 – December 1, 2011. Whereabouts Café, Newark, DE.
The First State. July 20 – August 9, 2012. Gallery 50, Rehoboth, DE. Two invited photographs.
Photo Month 2011. September 1 – September 30, 2011. Packard Reath Gallery, Lewes, DE, and Gallery 50, Rehoboth, DE. One photograph selected. Jurors: Lee Wayne, Ellen Elms Notar, Ph.D., John Burger, M.D., Dinah Reath, Jay Pastore.
The HOLGA Show 2010. June 18 – August 18, 2010. The Saans Downtown Gallery, Salt Lake City, UT. Four photographs selected. Juror: Richard Floyd. Curator: Céline Downen.
The HOLGA Show 2008. November 2008 – January 2009. The Saans Downtown Gallery, Salt Lake City, UT. Three photographs selected. Jurors: Amanda Moore and Steph Parke. Curator: Shalee Cooper.
Is it possible to make a photograph of New Jersey regardless of where you are in the world? April 6 – May 25, 2008. The Pierro Gallery, South Orange, NJ. Eight photographs selected. Curator: Laurel Ptak.
“New developments.” Pictory Magazine. March 3, 2010.
Free, Wild, and Fresh: The Holga Show 2010. 2010. Red Oak River Creative: Salt Lake City, UT.
Polaroid 250 Land Camera. Holga 120S. Canon AE-1. Kodak 3A Folding. Nikon D90.
Thomas J. Watson Fellowship. 1994 – 1995. Writing Poetry in T.S. Eliot’s Europe. $15,000.
PhD. English (Computers and English Concentration). The University of Texas at Austin. 2006.
MA. English Literature and Creative Writing. University of Cincinnati. 1997.
BA. English with Honors. Union College. 1994.
Photography classes with The University of Texas at Austin Informal Classes, The Rocky Mountain School of Photography, and photographers David Johndrow and Kent Weakly.
Associate Professor of Writing Arts, Rowan University, Glassboro, NJ, 08828
My goal as a photographer is to compose images that suggest. Depending on the location, time of day, subject, and media used, my images suggest a story or a history or a feeling. If I am successful the image suggests all three. The media I use to make my photographs are essential to the compositions themselves—the camera, the film (if any), the subject, and my goals for the image must complement each other.
For example, in my recent series, 2335 McCoy Road, I chose to photograph a decaying 200-year-old barn and surrounding farmland with a Polaroid 250 Land Camera and expired Chocolate peel-apart film. The camera and the film complement the decaying barn because, like the barn, they are anachronistic in a fast-paced digital world. Further, the chocolate-brown tones of the film and the textures resulting from the wet emulsions suggest a more significant history than if the images were made with a digital camera. And just as the structure of the barn was at the mercy of the weather so too was the peel-apart film: in a cool morning fog the brown tones turned pink and suggested an ethereal quality that would be impossible to replicate in Photoshop. My images of the barn made with a Canon AE-1 and a Brown Target Six-20 similarly enhance qualities embedded in the historic buildings themselves: grittiness, weight, manual operations, nostalgia, antiquity.
Lately I have been attempting to suggest the ethereal qualities of natural settings in the early morning mist and fog through the use of the Polaroid 250 Land Camera and expired Chocolate peel-apart film. At that time of day, the film records details in the foreground, forcing the viewer to pay close attention to nature’s intricacies, and shadowy impressions in the background, suggesting a much larger landscape. Between the detail and the fog rests the story.
I regularly use the following cameras because together with their films they facilitate the kinds of images I hope to make: Holga 120S, Polaroid 250 Land Camera, Canon AE-1, Kodak Brownie Target Six-20, and most recently, Kodak 3a Folding Pocket Camera. When I shoot digital I use a Nikon D90.
I am currently an Associate Professor of Writing Arts at Rowan University. I have taken photography classes with The University of Texas at Austin Informal Classes, The Rocky Mountain School of Photography, and photographers David Johndrow and Kent Weakly. My photographs have been shown in two solo exhibits (in Newark and Wilmington, DE) and multiple group exhibits in Delaware, New Jersey, and Utah.