portrait of the artist touching a sandstone wall, 1998, printed 2020

4”x5” silver chloride contact print on kodak azo, $200 + $10 shipping, edition 1/5 ($1000 for remaining edition)

one of the most significant parts of re-examining my archive has been the range of photographs made over the course of many decades. when this picture was made i had been living in new mexico for a few months and was quickly exploring the landscape near my home in albuquerque. a painter friend and i explored the area around tent rocks (now a national monument) when we discovered this area marked by graffiti and handprints rubbed into the soft sandstone. looking back the photograph is something of a metaphor for my own curiosity of the land, and my own interest in making connection with a place i would call home for the next three years.

the trinitite hunters, 1998, printed 2020

4”x5” silver chloride contact print on kodak azo. $200 + $10 shipping, edition 1/5 ($1000 for remaining edition)

when i moved to new mexico in 1998 one of the first destinations on my list was the trinity site, where the united states detonated the world’s first nuclear device—just days before bombs were dropped on hiroshima. i was a student of patrick nagatani at the time, which only increased my interest in this site, and helped foster more meaningful connections with the land. i anticipated being one of a few people visiting that day, standing around a large crater, in awe of the human ability to destroy. what i found were caravans of attendees flooding the site to bear witness to history. i’ve always been a person who tends to look away from where the crowds are looking, so one of the most curious facets of my visit was this group of outliers trying to find trinitite—the green, radioactive, melted earth that resulted from the blast.

web and twigs, cuyamaca mountains, 1995, printed 2020

4”x5” silver chloride contact print on kodak azo, $200 + $10 shipping, edition 1/5 ($1000 for remaining edition)

this photograph meant a lot to me when i made it in 1995. a tiny microcosm of the natural world, it was a harbinger of my interest in overlooked spaces found in the landscape and a sign of my still-strong interest in details. as a 4”x5” contact print it drives the ideas of intimacy, with rewards offered for closer inspection and the ability to be viewed by just one person at a time.

hollwood and vine, anza-borrego desert, 1996, printed 2020

4”x5” silver chloride contact print on kodak azo, $200 + $10 shipping, edition 1/5 ($1000 for remaining edition)

there’s a long history with this sign that dates to the late 19th century, at which time it indicated the location of a nearby spring for travelers in covered wagons. enter wwii and some navy pilots who noticed it during their bombing runs and an icon is born. when i made this photograph in 1996 i’d been digging deep into cultural history of the desert landscape, making this sign a ripe subject for a photograph. capturing it with a 4”x5” camera was another matter since it’s perched on a small hill that’s not fit for tripods and a camera operator.

near cloverdale, new mexico, 1998, printed 2020

4”x5” silver chloride contact print on kodak azo, $200 + $10 shipping, edition 1/5 ($1000 for remaining edition)

i made this photograph in the boot heel of new mexico, not far from the mexican border, on a dead end road of crumbling pavement. the signs were made by an 81 year old rancher named j.d. hughey who had been modifying state mandated signs seen by almost no one. i was interested in obscure histories of the landscape, and made just two 4”x5” negatives from about a dozen signs that had been modified. after making the photograph i stopped in a drug store café in the nearby town of animas, new mexico. sipping burnt coffee i asked the server if she knew j.d. hughey… “of course i know j.d.” she told me. it was a surprise to hear she hadn’t heard about the nearby signs put up by the rancher.

st. paul’s cathedral, san diego, 1995, printed 2020

4”x5” silver chloride contact print on kodak azo

this is one of the earliest examples i can find of creating moody, black on black images. i lived next door to this cathedral during the mid-nineties and made a number of photographs of it over the years. it was a good subject to begin to understand the technical aspects of the view camera, which come into play when shooting architecture. more interesting to my eye today is the introduction of a personal perspective, which i was after in choosing a side of the building that had no illumination, allowing me to explore the very threshold of the films sensitivity.

studio still life, san diego, 1995, printed 2020

4”x5” silver chloride contact print on kodak azo

before i became addicted to the land as a subject i experimented in many directions. after seeing the robert frank moving out exhibition at the national gallery of art in 1995 i was taken with his use of paint applied to still images and motion pictures. this is a uniquely interesting photograph from my archive, documenting a pair of mounted silver prints with the word “isolation” painted in red across the face of both and the cup of red paint used in the process. this was shot on a large format camera at a window of time when i was making contact prints and enlargements. in the background is my bessler 4x5mxt enlarger with two enlarging lenses. it’s a snapshot in time before i would abandon everything seen in the photo: painted photographs, enlargers, dry mounting, and silver printing.

san diego, california, 1996, printed 2020

4”x5” silver chloride contact print on kodak azo

digging through my archive it made sense to pair this photograph with the one below boyds, maryland. this was shot on a typically foggy morning directly across the street from my apartment at 2662 sixth ave., in what was a productive period for making photographs. when i first made and printed this image it was an exercise in pushing boundaries toward high key photographs with no black in the image, pushing all the information to the highest tones that could be rendered photographically. this is an early example of work that was pushing my personal boundaries as a printmaker, something that would catapult the following year when i made the night photograph font’s point, southern california (see the nocturnes portfolio). today i’ve been pushing these same ideas with platinum/palladium through the use of paper negatives and groupings of multiple images that explore the visible ends of the printmaking spectrum.

boyds, maryland, 1994, printed 2020

4”x5” silver chloride contact print on kodak azo

i made this photograph in the back yard of the house where i grew up. this sweeping forest is one that i looked at every day of my childhood, built forts within, wandered throughout, and saw as a space of refuge. on a return trip home, in the first year i owned a 4”x5” view camera, i saw it as a towering, graphic form that could be reduced to little more than two tones. it’s interesting to look back on this and consider the work i’m currently making, particularly that in half blind. the concerns are the same: seeing nature in graphic terms and representing it as uniquely different than human vision.

balboa park, san diego, 1995, printed 2020

4”x5” silver chloride contact print on kodak azo. $200 + $10 shipping, edition 1/5 ($1000 for remaining edition)

my own evolution to making minimalist art arguably started with this picture in 1995. i would often shoot after 2:00am, after i got home from a goth club, photography was a good way to wind down before going to sleep. much of my early work was influenced by legendary artists such as harry callahan, with select examples showing that influence with clarity. in the years after this photograph was made i would increasingly push the ideas of minimalism and exploring the limits of photographic process. for years i’ve told students that an artist does not wake up deciding to make art that departs from convention, that it is an evolution. exploring these early works has been an education into my own practice, and an enjoyable one at that.

the eucalyptus by which a dead man once lay, 1997, printed 2020

4”x5” silver chloride contact print on kodak azo. $200 + $10 shipping, edition 1/5 ($1000 for remaining edition)

this is the site where edward weston’s iconic dead man, colorado desert was made on may 17, 1937. the location is on the edge of anza-borrego desert state park, where weston and charis traveled on the second trip of his guggenheim fellowship. the location has significance to me for several reasons, and is now off limits due to habitat restoration. the subject of his photograph, a drifter named grover c. sutton, has been the source of a research project i worked on, and a lecture i gave at the phoenix art museum—stories best told in person. weston’s original photograph is included in amy conger’s catalog of the ccp print archive (edward weston: photographs, 1991) as catalog 1013/1937. the eroded mud hill (catalog 1012/1937) can be seen at the left side of the frame.

near cloverdale, new mexico, 1998, printed 2020

4”x5” silver chloride contact print on kodak azo, $200 + $10 shipping, edition 1/5 ($1000 for remaining edition)

i made this photograph on a long road trip from my home in new mexico to california, passing through arizona and mexico along the way. in the boot heel of new mexico, near the mexican border, an 81 year old rancher named j.d. hughey had been modifying street signs on a 20 mile dead end road. i was interested in obscure histories of the landscape so this fit the bill perfectly, and i was a vegetarian then so this one had added meaning. after making the photograph i stopped in a drug store café in the nearby town of animas, new mexico. sipping burnt coffee i asked the server if she knew j.d. hughey… “of course i know j.d.” she told me. i was surprised to hear she hadn’t heard about his signs.

view of a volcano from within a small cave, west of albuquerque, 1998, printed 2020

4x5” silver chloride print on kodak azo, $200 +$10 shipping, edition 1/5, ($1000 for regular edition)

i made this photograph inside one of the extinct volcanoes near albuquerque, shortly after moving there in january 1998. it reflected a growing interest in minimalism and finding intersections between the natural and developed world. i lived in albuquerque for three years, a period when i embraced the minimalist work that became the nocturnes portfolio. photographs such as this mark a distinct shift in my work as i moved toward increasingly subtle views of the landscape.

the arrival of my first platinum/palladium kit, 1996, printed 2020

4x5” silver chloride print on kodak azo, $200 + $10 shipping, edition 1/5, ($1000 for regular edition)

this photograph was made at 2662 sixth ave., in san diego—where i had my first working darkroom from 1994 until 1998. i remember opening this box from bostick & sullivan and feeling it was the beginning of something big. 24 years later this photograph marks the literal start of my career. today i still use the three brown bottles in the center of the carpet, still have the printed guide (on the left) in my library, and the empty bottle of ammonium citrate developer still sits on my darkroom shelf. the pack of paper in the foreground was cranes platinotype, now discontinued but one of the best platinum papers ever made.

the decision to make this print on kodak azo is a nod to a time when i only made silver prints. kodak azo is considered one of the finest printing papers in the history of photography, widely used by masters of the medium since the birth of modernism in the 1920s.