Idaho 1 (2005)

Photographers in the modern era have sought to depict nature with scientific detachment. However, by endeavoring to faithfully archive natural phenomena, the photographer imposes human principals of order on the natural subject. The resulting photographic image is thus a record of the photographer’s perception and restructuring of nature, a projection of the photographer’s point of view.

Unlike the Pictorialists, my manipulation of the photographic process is not used to imitate painting or idealize the subject, but to help erase delusions of photographic objectivity. My aim is to subvert the structural genre of the nature of photography. I seek to reveal nature as a primal, mysterious, animate entity – much the way it might have been perceived by our earlier ancestors. Lack of focus, warm tones and square, vignetted borders are employed to present nature as enigmatic, untamed and subjective, subtly reminding us of the influence of the unconscious on visual perception. The images are intended to more closely match the experience of human memory, which is fading, biased and otherwise imperfect.

My photographs do not glorify broadly recognized landmarks or natural wonders. The views are not spectacular, monumental or mythical. All are photographs of undistinguished North American sites, significant not for their locations, but for the inherent natural characteristics they convey. In keeping with the anonymity of the subject matter, only the name of the state in which a photograph was taken is given as its title.