East/West, a bicoastal photographic documentationbegun in 2006, provides an uncompromised view of the diverse, ever-changingshoreline of America, from the rocky shores of Maine to the golden beaches ofSouthern California.
I use my lens as my guide to uncover thisnew and unfamiliar terrain, capturing the natural, ambient light of the coastsas I explore them. With this project the composition of each scene is carefullystudied to investigate the point where land and sea merge. As East/West has evolved, it has becomemore than an act of cataloguing destinations, but rather an exploration of themeditative and rejuvenating space which occurs where one landscape ends andanother begins.
By choosing to use a large format camera,which is a heavy and somewhat unwieldy machine, I am able to observe thelandscape at a much slower pace. In doing so, the moments when I chose torelease the shutter have become ones where I find that all elements havesynthesized into place in the frame. The photograph has thus become quitedeliberate and thought out, allowing me to feel immersed within the scenearound me rather than taking a snapshot from the sidelines. The large formatcamera captures a huge amount of detail that is passed onto a sheet of filmrendering the final photographs as crisp, sharp and wonderfully nuanced incolor. It also provides the ability for prints to be made on a large scalewithout the loss of detail.
The East/West project is a discovery of abeauty found on the edge: both the literal edge of land and sea, and perhaps onanother level—the psychological edge of one known, quantifiable space toanother that is mysterious and seemingly endless, beautiful, deadly, sublime.
I use my lens as my guide to uncover thisnew and unfamiliar terrain, capturing the natural, ambient light of the coastsas I explore them. With this project the composition of each scene is carefullystudied to investigate the point where land and sea merge. As East/West has evolved, it has becomemore than an act of cataloguing destinations, but rather an exploration of themeditative and rejuvenating space which occurs where one landscape ends andanother begins.
By choosing to use a large format camera,which is a heavy and somewhat unwieldy machine, I am able to observe thelandscape at a much slower pace. In doing so, the moments when I chose torelease the shutter have become ones where I find that all elements havesynthesized into place in the frame. The photograph has thus become quitedeliberate and thought out, allowing me to feel immersed within the scenearound me rather than taking a snapshot from the sidelines. The large formatcamera captures a huge amount of detail that is passed onto a sheet of filmrendering the final photographs as crisp, sharp and wonderfully nuanced incolor. It also provides the ability for prints to be made on a large scalewithout the loss of detail.
The East/West project is a discovery of abeauty found on the edge: both the literal edge of land and sea, and perhaps onanother level—the psychological edge of one known, quantifiable space toanother that is mysterious and seemingly endless, beautiful, deadly, sublime.
