The poet Mary Oliver invited us to 

“Pay Attention.

Be Astonished. 

Tell About It.”

I rejoice in the visual world, especially nature.  I  have pursued many ways to make my subject look more real than real in order to bring greater attention and meaning to it.  I have drawn and painted on paper and canvas, taken conventional photographs, and painted and drawn on photographs to inspire wonder in the everyday.  

When I entered the realm of infrared photography, I found that the familiar is not so familiar.  An infrared camera sensor is able to capture light invisible to the unaided human eye.  I use digital tools to refine that light, as in the way darkroom chemicals generate what one originally saw through the camera lens.  Live green foliage reflects infrared rays, and thus appear white or very light in infrared.  Blue skies and water absorb infrared rays, so they appear black. While I have been photographing in infrared for several years, there is still a mystery to the medium which I love. I never quite know how the picture is going to appear until I click the shutter and then process it digitally. 

My photographic journey began when I inherited my father’s Argus C3 rangefinder camera in high school. In graduate school at the University of Michigan, I studied with photographer Joanne Leonard, who encouraged me to combine photography with drawing, painting, and collage.  After graduate school, I pursued other photography media, including Polaroid transfers.  This medium again allowed me to combine drawing, painting, and collage with photography.

In 2014, seeking other ways to portray the world, I began to shoot in infrared photography using converted digital SLR cameras.  I learned invaluable shooting and editing techniques from infrared masters Laurie Klein and Kyle Klein Perler. I process each image in Photoshop and various Photoshop plug-in filters to bring it to its fullest potential of sharpness, clarity, softness, color, contrast, and value range, depending on what is most appropriate for the expressive nature of the individual image. I may spend hours processing a single image before finally saving and printing it. 

Selected Exhibitions

Oliver Wolcott Library, Litchfield, CT, Joint Exhibit. “Land & Sky,” with Sally Frank, April-May 2024.

Photo Place Gallery, Middlebury VT, Group Juried Exhibit, “The Decisive Moment, September 2023.

Indian Mountain School, Themed Juried Group Exhibits, 2018, 2019, 2023.

Serendipity Gallery, Juried Group Exhibit, Litchfield, CT, Spring 2019.

Smithy Gallery, New Preston, CT, Juried Solo Exhibit, August 2017.

Center for Photographic Art, Carmel, CA, Members’ Juried Exhibition, Summer 2015.

Oliver Wolcott Library, Litchfield, CT, Juried Solo Exhibits, August 2004 and July 2016.

University of Connecticut, Greater Hartford Campus, Juried Solo Exhibit, December 2008.

Joachim Schumacher Gallery, Westover School, Middlebury, CT, Solo Juried Exhibit, January 2005.

Awards

First Prize winner, $5000, for photograph “Innisfree Waterfall,” February 2018 in art exhibit and contest, “Celebrating Water,” Indian Mountain School, Lakeville, CT. Jurors: Sandra Boynton, Agnes Gund, Craig F. Starr.

Finalist, for photograph “Bereft Tree, Plunge Pool,” in the Photographer’s Forum 38th Annual Spring Contest. Published in Photographer’s Forum Best of Photography 2018.

Finalist, for photograph “Ali, Hudson, NY,” in the Photographer’s Forum 37th Annual Spring Contest. Published in Photographer’s Forum Best of Photography 2017.

Education

BFA, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, 1982

MFA, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 1989

Additional summer studies: Parsons School of Design in Paris and Tuscany; the Cleveland Institute of Art in Lacoste, France; Vermont Studio Center, and Maine College of Art and Design