Keeping Time
My photographs are a visual diary of the people, places and things I come across in life. I found my direction after the diagnosis of my mother with Alzheimer’s Disease. I became increasingly more interested in the notion of memory and how I would deal with her losing hers as well as the possibility that one day I might lose mine. For me the act of photographing is a means to preserve a moment in time and then allow me to return to it later in order to conjure up my feelings and memories of that place and time.

I was drawn to the toy camera called the Holga for its ability to render a nostalgic feel to the photograph. With it’s plastic lens it creates an imperfect image, with vignetting as well as soft focus, that further enhances the idea that the photograph may actually be from a past time. The loss of detail at the borders suggests a falling away of time or the loss of memory details, symbolic of what is happening to my mother. The soft focus blurs the image enough to suggest that, with time, perhaps our memories will start to fade and no longer be as clear as they seemed to be.

Read my blog on Keeping Time and see new images as they are added.

Squares & Panoramics
This body of work was inspired while driving home from western New York after the diagnosis of my mother with Alzheimer's Disease. I began to notice that the cultivated fields of the farmlands I was passing had changed in color. It was autumn and over the course of the year as I had traveled back and forth, I had watched the same fields go from one color to the next as they grew and matured. I was struck by the beauty of the color and not by the details of what was in the fields. After not having picked up a camera for some time I saw a new way to look at the world around me. I realized how this awakening for me somehow paralleled what was happening to my mother as she began to lose the details of her life. It was the impetus for me to begin working in color and to blur the details of the image. Through the use of motion and long exposures I am working towards capturing images that are about time and it's passing, our memories, and the impressions they leave.

Though my work is not about Alzheimer’s it has been inspired by the disease and it’s impact on my life. It is dedicated to my mother, who continues to inspire me towards a life filled with creativity.

A dear friend says that, "we have to embrace the complicated, multicolored richness of our experience", regardless of what that may be. I believe she is right.

A portion of the proceeds from the sale of prints will be donated to an Alzheimer's organization to help in their research to find not only a cause but also a cure.