Artist's Statement

 

In 1954, I took my first serious photographs at my Aunt Donna's wedding and put them into an album; even then, I recall, I tried to find an unusual way of framing what I saw, a passion that has gone on for 60 years. Today, I am focused on bridging the gap between photography and fine art in a unique way. My influences come from painters such as Basquiat, Rauschenberg, Warhol, and Duchamp, rather than photographers.

After many years of darkroom oriented  black and white photography, I discovered a relationship with colorful torn posters, a form of “found art,” which has been my exclusive subject for the past ten years. These abandoned, left-for-dead fragments, often—randomly—come together in mysteriously aesthetic decollages, in which parts are subtracted, rather than added. I simply resurrect them as I find them, adding nothing. They represent, for me, the process of living, dying, and transformation. I intend these inscrutable images to retain the mystery, the beauty, and the rigors of life.