News — photographic narrative

During Monterey Car Week, I revisit three fine art photographs of vintage automobiles made in Pebble Beach in 2008 and 2009, when I had the rare opportunity to encounter the cars before the crowds arrived. What began as an encounter with automotive history becomes a meditation on memory, desire, beauty and time. The 1928 Mercedes-Benz S Tourer, 1938 Buick Century Coupe and 1955 Jaguar Roadster become symbolic characters in a story about the way objects survive while the lives surrounding them disappear.

This essay reflects on the invisible thresholds that shape our lives. Inspired by an ethereal image of an egret passing through a dreamlike forest, it explores memory, transformation, and the quiet journeys that occur long before we recognize them. Rather than documenting nature, the photograph becomes a meditation on becoming, inviting viewers to complete the story with their own experiences.

The Camera I Carry is my personal reflection on National Camera Day. Moving through my evolution from brushes to film to iPhone, and drawing on a recent wet plate collodion demonstration at the Monterey Museum of Art, I consider what connects Niépce's eight-hour exposure in 1826 to the woman on the pier that morning with her phone raised to the fog. The answer, I suggest, is not technology. It is intention.

In this cinematic black-and-white image, two anonymous figures stand atop luminous clouds above a dark sea, suspended between reality and dream. Inspired in spirit by the quiet surrealism of René Magritte, the work explores memory, human connection, and the invisible emotional landscapes people carry within them. The image invites viewers into an ambiguous narrative where symbolism replaces certainty and silence becomes part of the story.

This work explores silence as an essential compositional force, drawing parallels between visual stillness and musical pauses. Through softened forms, atmospheric restraint, and deliberate negative space, the image transforms a simple still life into a meditation on presence, absence, and emotional subtlety. It invites viewers to engage not with what is shown, but with what is withheld.