I am a photographic artist based in the Missouri Ozarks. My work explores memory, loss, endurance, place, and the quiet traces that remain after people, moments, and ways of life have passed.
I work slowly and primarily with large-format cameras, handmade photographic materials, and traditional darkroom processes. The physical making of the photograph matters to me because the finished print is not simply an image. It is an object shaped by light, paper, chemistry, time, and the hand of the maker.
Pictorial Whispers
My primary body of work is Pictorial Whispers, an ongoing series created from a single vintage window in my Ozarks studio.
The photographs use flowers, vessels, empty space, light, and gesture to explore grief, memory, endurance, healing, and what remains after loss. Individual portfolios within the larger project examine these ideas from different directions, including Windowlight Studies and The Shape of Absence.
Each Pictorial Whispers photograph begins as a handmade calotype paper negative and is contact printed by hand as a salted-paper print using processes rooted in photography’s earliest years.
The softness, paper structure, imperfections, and subtle variations inherent in these processes are important to the work. They allow the photograph to behave more like memory itself—physical yet uncertain, present yet incomplete.
Rooted in the Ozarks
The Missouri Ozarks are more than the place where I live. They shape the way I see and the subjects I return to.
Alongside Pictorial Whispers, I maintain two long-term photographic projects rooted in this region.
Historic Mills of the Ozarks documents surviving mills, waterways, landscapes, and physical traces of the communities that developed around them.
Wild Horses of Missouri follows the wild horses living within the Ozark National Scenic Riverways, documenting their bands, relationships, births, losses, movements, and connection to the landscape over time.
Although these projects are visually different, they share the same underlying concerns: memory, place, endurance, change, and what remains.
A Long Photographic Practice
My photographic practice extends beyond making individual photographs. Over the years I have written and published books, technical guides, workshops, courses, and extensive educational material covering large-format photography, traditional darkroom practice, black-and-white film, paper negatives, historic photographic processes, and handmade printmaking.
That work reflects many years spent studying photographic materials and processes, but technique is ultimately in service of the photograph.
My focus today is increasingly simple: make meaningful bodies of work, make the physical prints as well as I know how, and allow those photographs to develop slowly over time.
Working Slowly
I do not believe every part of an artistic practice needs to become faster or more efficient.
Much of my work depends on observation, repetition, returning to the same subjects, waiting for light, making mistakes, revisiting prints, and allowing ideas to change as the work develops.
The handmade processes I use reinforce that way of working. They require attention and patience, but they also leave room for uncertainty and discovery.
For me, that slowness is not an obstacle to the work.
It is part of the work.
Artist CV
My Artist CV includes selected bodies of work, publications, books, workshops, educational projects, and other professional photographic activity.
Follow the Work
I share new photographs, studio notes, project developments, exhibition news, and reflections on the continuing work through the Darkroom Diary.
