For the past ten years I have been examining the different ways ‘nature’—whether real or artificial—appears in an urban environment. Growing up in Chicago gave me an ‘urban childhood’—running through gangways and exploring alleys with my friends—something most kids today don’t experience. Though my parents grew up much in the same way, they actually planted the seeds for my appreciation of the natural world through lots of outside play, camping trips, and odd pets (our duck named Sir Francis Drake, for example). These beginnings, I am sure, influence and inspire my work, and drive me to notice and contemplate the lives of other living things.

I began this project looking at ‘fake nature’, wondering what substitutions for nature can satisfy in people. Looking deeper I began photographing live/real animals and how they can be a link for us to a world far from the reality and pace of contemporary life, as well as provide an intangible link to a deeper world of instinct and rawness. Animals appear as icons representing a certain ideal, live as our pets and companions, offer novelty and sport, are/were used for work, and of course for food. Wild animals in a city can make themselves practically invisible; often their only evidence is revealed to us in a momentary glimpse or through finding their remains. I am interested in exploring
how we live with animals, how they define us, and how we define them in relation to us.

Overall, this work looks at the evolution of relationships established between humans and their environment and other animal species, how we coexist with the natural world, and the disappearance of it within the urban space.