In 1990 another seminal event occurred in my life. This was the chance (or fated) encounter with the woman who was to become the love of my life and soon my wife. Melissa. One of our first romantic getaways together was a trip to Sedona, Arizona in a funky old motor home shaped like a loaf of Wonder Bread. Though ugly as can be and of marginal mechanical abilities, it gave us the opportunity to travel together, finding in the many miles wandering the Southwest a common love of travel. It was with her encouragement that I bring my camera along and start photographing the many beautiful places we visited. I had been photographing the nude exclusively for the previous 20 years, so this was uncharted territory for me. So the next five years were spent learning and doing traditional landscape work, following in the tripod holes of hundreds before us. Eventually Melissa became tired of what she saw as more rock and stick pictures, anticipating my own reluctance to make any more pretty landscape pictures, especially now that I was working exclusively in platinum. I mean, how many more pictures of Monument Valley does the world really need?

As sometimes happens, a chance occurrence changed the path of my work forever. A friend and collector invited me to come to Pittsburgh to help him with some darkroom problems. The plan was to photograph during the day and develop and print at night. This was my first opportunity to photograph in an urban environment. I was captivated by the city, its gritty buildings and bridges, the steel mills and the rivers that connected them all. It was the start of an entire new body of work, what I call the American Landscape series. I have been working on this for the last 8 years. All of the work has been shot with an 8 X 10 inch view camera and printed in platinum. I gravitate to images of visual density and layering, requiring time to reveal all of the intricacies and detail only a large format negative can provide. I now travel all over the country, staying with friends and colleagues, and try to find interesting vignettes and stories about our amazing country, especially the infrastructure of the United States; it’s bridges, highways, rivers, and railways. While I often work in large cities (Chicago, Minneapolis, Pittsburgh), I am most strongly drawn to the Midwest and rural farm lands and small town America.

All of the images are 8 X 10 platinum prints. All prints are hand coated by me and printed on Cranes Platinotype. The prints are editioned in 25. Prints come matted in 4 ply rag front and back. Prints are signed, editioned and titled on the print and signed on the matt. Prices increase as editions sell out.