As I was pulling weeds from the garden, I came across her red hair and eggshells buried in the soil. During the fog of her chemotherapy, my mother-in-law was fertilizing the geraniums with herself and the leftovers from breakfast. This discovery is woven into our family’s mythology, after we inherited my wife’s childhood home, a Cinderella house on a street with only one way out. Cul-de-sac is a luminous tapestry of visual stories, intertwining our family’s legacy of ghosts and love.
The performances began after nightfall, while our kids were watching TV. I would point the camera into the corners and eddies of our backyard and neighborhood, searching for life in the dark. With marks of light and sculpting with color, I reinterpreted my own sense of family. These were the years of my midlife passage, as photography was moving away from analog cameras and film. In time, our cul-de-sac became a vibrant neighborhood, filled with art, laughter, and a future we could not have envisioned when I first pulled those weeds.
Cul de Sac
Marks of light using tricolor filtering during an extended exposure performance onto a single sheet of film. All of this is analog, 1985 - 1991.
Ascension
Tales from Turtle Creek, PA
Innocence
Last Christmas
Waterfall
Dad and cigarette
Turtles' Grave
Witness
Shiva
Anxious Flamingo
Handscape
My Son Sean lying on a wooden deck holding a green hose that is connected to an orange and yellow power device, with colorful marks of light creating reflections on the deck.
Bound to Fail
Female Dog
Father
Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep
Self Portrait
Pickets
Gabrial's Kiss
Son
Home Life