ARTIST STATEMENT

I spent the first 7 years of my life growing up in rural Canada in an existential crisis, aware that I was not like other people.  I was 6 years old and already planning my get-a-way. Walking 2 miles to school and two miles home, 5 days a week in 35 below zero, I wondered how far I would get if I made a run for it, and then somewhere around my 12th birthday I had the revelation that no one was like anyone. That epiphany got me through a few more years there.

My father gave me a camera when I was 15 and I took to it straight away. I started taking pictures then and have never stopped really. I moved to New York City to study painting and photography and started shooting the streets of NYC long before I knew what a Street Photographer even was.

I have spent over four decades photographing American life, primarily in New York City, with parallel work in California. What began as a response to a city in decay has expanded into a long-term body of work that looks at how Americans live—on the street, in their homes, and through the objects that surround them.

Taken together, these photographs form a sustained observation of place, survival, and identity across two coasts.