For years I struggled to photograph the large bodies of water in my life. Lakes and oceans have always been my refuge and my solace, and they never fail to attract my lens.
However, time and time again I failed to capture the water; my photos were much too busy, seeing everything while capturing nothing.
Now, I distill the water into its simplest form, making abstract what is too big to capture conventionally.
Lake Michigan, facing north. 2020.
Lake Michigan, facing east. 2019.
By panning the camera while holding down its shutter, I create blurred abstracts of the water’s most distinctive qualities: color and texture.
I strip away the busy imperfections, the out-of-place waves and clouds and flotsam. After the pan, only the essence of the subject is left.
Lake Michigan, facing east. 2020.
The sea is vast, not only in space, but in time as well; my work is a pursuit of that sea, an attempt to find something fundamental in its transient idiosyncrasies.
I cast a wide net across the sea’s fleeting daily faces, from the bright haze of a stale mid-morning to the deep and dusky greens of the gloaming, in hopes that I might create some foundational manifestation of its being.
Below: North Atlantic, facing east. 2021.
Left: North Atlantic, facing south. 2020.
In these images, I photograph the very human feeling we get when we gaze out at the horizon. Rather than capture it objectively, I strip my subject of its time and space, like a studio portrait or a simple line drawing.
By siphoning the essence of that rich and varied vastness, by veiling the dizzying busyness of context, I unveil the water.