Ideas

Nostalgia: a wistful or excessively sentimental yearning for return to or of some past period or irrecoverable condition. Also, for me, the sometimes fantastical and certainly idealized past which I create in memory as a way of coping with this yearning for the irrecoverable. As a way of dealing with my need to understand myself....rephotograph old family photos of people and places that made up my infancy, childhood, and adolescence in order to juxtapose these with modern photos of the same places and people. Looking for a correlation or the lack there of between my memory and staunch reality of time changing the evidence of our presence. Hopefully inherently relatable.



Dam the Water. Water is life in my mind which seeks for a biological and spiritual connection between humanity and our home. The importance of water and increase in population has led to our manipulation and attempts to store it. Manipulation by redirecting flow and building roads over and through tributaries to meet the needs of human sprawl and storage in the form of man made reservoirs. This need for survival creates a link w/ our world that, if ever broken, will mean the end of civilizations as we know them. This would be the feeling behind my attempt to photograph dams, low water crossings, etc. in order to show there is beauty in necessity.

Continuation of my Beautifully Uncomfortable series where I photographed harsh natural subjects as a way of challenging myself to find beauty in the harshness of life. Trying to focus more on plant life or degradation of natural areas instead of dead animals. Beauty of the habitual course of a growing population in a general sense instead of focusing on specific subjects. Maybe less personal more general....or more relatable to all.

Hikes into fairly remote locations to photograph at many different times in many different areas peacefulness or serenity or vacancy, harshness, barrenness...starkness? Whatever I might find relatable to wilderness or nature that is not common viewing for the average person in modern society. The process of a long hike and a night in the wilderness for the specific purpose of searching for photographs should be important, integral to the process. Texas, regionally, alluding to nostalgia in a way as Texas is my home and the only area currently realistically accessible.

Family project focusing on portraits of my small family in their environments. Since I've been studying photography I've yet to do portraits of my family and think it might be wise to one day see where this could lead for my family is small and I shall lose more of them some day soon.

Trends in naming. New constructions come up with new names for properties of no previous importance. Adding the ever present capitalist pretension to whatever endeavor is served to sale a unit or property..."The Villas at Onion Creek", "The Bridges at Battle Bend", "The Wharf at Ahab's desire"! Always something at something such is the silly new trend...never the pasture by the highway or the old crappy apartment we want to sell as condos! Photograph this specific vernacular on fancy overdone signage at beautiful light times..Compose beautiful image at the right time with the trendy signage the indirect subject...sarcastic maybe a little, definitely poking fun at ourselves.