The exhibits below were previously featured on this site.

Cabinet of Curiosities After Dark

In this exhibit, the curtain rises on a miniature theatre, like a veil previously separating our world from a dark and playful afterlife. Here, I explore a version of still life photography using artifacts from my own version of a “wunderkammer” (German for “cabinet of curiosities”).  In the 16th and 17th centuries, such cabinets were popular because the worldview of that time saw linkages among such things, and among things and spirit and nature. 

According to art historian Barbara Stafford, cabinets of curiosity encouraged this kind of understanding.  Juxtapositions of objects in the wunderkammers served to simulate conversation. She suggests that a “system of sideways looks” characterized these displays, and that artifacts “cacophonously ‘chatted’ among themselves and with the spectator.” (https://medium.com/@lubar/cabinets-of-curiosity-a134f65c115a)

Healing Trees

“She Told Me the Earth Loves Us” by Anne Haven McDonnell

She said it softly, without a need 
for conviction or romance.
After everything? I asked, ashamed. 

That's not the kind of love she meant.
She walked through a field of gray 
beetle-pored pine, snags branching

like polished bone. I forget sometimes
how trees look at me with the generosity 
of water. I forget all the other 

breath I'm breathing in. 
Today I learned that trees can't sleep
with our lights on. That they knit 

a forest in their language, their feelings. 
This is not a metaphor. 
Like seeing a face across a crowd, 

we are learning all the old things, 
newly shined and numbered. 
I'm always looking 

for a place to lie down
and cry. Green, mossed, shaded. 
Or rock-quiet, empty. Somewhere

to hush and start over. 
I put on my antlers in the sun. 
I walk through the dark gates of the trees. 

Grief waters my footsteps, leaving 
a trail that glistens. 

Reprinted with author’s permission. See: https://www.allwecansave.earth/anthology and

https://www.middlecreekpublishing.com/about-5 for original publication.

Drifting Through Deep Time

During August, 2021, my spouse and I spent a week at a rented beach house on mid-coast Maine.  One afternoon, while scrambling among rocks strewn along the beach, I was attacked by hordes of black flies.  I found a breezy refuge on a large promontory boulder that overlooked the pounding surf.  Though my temporary perch must have weighed well over a ton, it rocked gently but perceptibly as waves advanced and receded.  Gazing across the horizon, I was lulled into a meditative reflection about the origins of the boulder. Turns out that the beach house was built on a fragment of a proto-continent called Avalonia, which originated below the equator almost a billion years ago.  

“Deep time” is a term sometimes applied to geological timescales like the Earth’s lifespan.  When considered from the perspective of Earth’s 4.6 billion year existence, our species’ 300,000 year span seems vanishingly brief.  It can be challenging for us humans to grasp time periods longer than few thousand years.  The more we feel connected to both the distant past and a future beyond our individual lives, the more we may care about becoming good ancestors.

For this exhibit, I made long exposures on that Maine beach, using intentional camera movement to suggest the passage of time. The resulting semi-abstractions are intended as metaphors for moments in the geologically-violent trajectory of Avalonia through time and space.

Band of Brothers

Why can’t more male friends say “I love you” to each other?  This title of an article in the Washington Post, May 16, 2021, that caught my attention.  Though I turned 70 shortly thereafter, these words can still get caught in my throat.  “Love” is a verb I have tended to reserve for my immediate family.  Until recently, I would not even have said that I love myself. 

I have been in a men’s group for over 30 years (six of whose members have remained that whole time).  We have experienced births, deaths, marriages, divorces, career changes, retirements…  We hug, cheer each other’s successes, mourn our sorrows, challenge each other to be our better selves, and listen.  Though this support and caring is not without bumps, they will always be my brothers.  If “I love you” does not apply to them, then who?

Looking back, I gleaned much about male emotional expression from my dad, who demonstrated his love and caring much more frequently than he verbally expressed it.  And he presumably learned his emotional expression from his father, a patriarchal figure who emigrated from the Ukraine as a teenager.  As often the case with immigrants at the time, my grandfather’s priority was looking after his family financially rather than emotional expression.  My dad returned from the infantry after World War II with undiagnosed PTSD after a series of horrific experiences.  He buried these wrenching memories for decades, but at some emotional cost.  When I was an adolescent, he may have declined Boy Scout camping trips (having done enough sleeping in tents), though I never doubted that he loved me.

Fast forward to early summer, 2021, when the pandemic had lifted enough that my men’s group met in person outside.  I decided to make a series of individual portraits of them.  My plan was to have each sit in the same chair and close their eyes, whereupon I would tell him how much I cared about him and invite him to deeply take in my words.  After a moment, he would then open his eyes and I would take his portrait, resulting in these images. In our group, each man has chosen an animal name to metaphorically represent characteristics with which he identifies.  Hence the names attached to the portraits.

In retrospect, it was less vulnerable for me to express my feelings to each man with his eyes closed than if we were looking at each other during the portrait. I don’t know how doing so might have affected these portraits. In any case, I remain a work in progress trying to do better for those I love.

Come Ye Hither

In order to perpetuate their species, flowering plants must attract animal pollinators that transfer pollen between male and female reproductive organs.  A flower’s male part (anther) is a sac-like structure that produces and stores pollen. The female pistil forms the innermost parts of the flower, containing the ovary.  A pollinator moves pollen from the anther to the stigma (opening of the pistil tube) consummating fertilization.

To entice visits from pollinators, flowers have evolved to display attractive colors, provide rewards (nectar), and/or release pleasing scents to them.  As the population of key pollinator species decline, however, these enticements may be for naught.  

I made most images in this exhibit at Brookside Gardens in Wheaton Regional Park, Maryland, often using a close-up device on my lens to intrude deeply into the blooms’ intimate spaces. Humans’ mobility obviates the need for a third party to facilitate the union of male and female sex cells.  Still, we seek to attract partners and compete for attention through visual cues, scents, and gifts.  As I strolled among the flowers, my own memories blossomed and faded -- a prom, a first date, marriage, second chances.

TROPISMS

Over successive encounters with a patch of pink anemones growing in my front yard, I won their trust sufficiently such that they allowed me to observe their subtle but complex family dynamics, even their more intimate moments. Multi-generational flower families share the same stalk with magenta-budded children, adults flaunting pink blossoms around yellow centers, and elders left only with green husks after losing their petals. During my visits, I observed fierce competition for attention, “wall flowers” content to remain at the periphery, and family members seeking and offering solace in the face of loss.  I used a macro lens with shallow depth of field to uncover and highlight these much quieter individuals than those whom Alice encountered.

KILLING ME SOFTLY

I find myself simultaneously lulled and repelled by dense mats of invasive vines as they creep across natural areas. These overgrowths soften landscapes otherwise sharp with branches from trees and shrubs. I am reminded of what happens while listening to my car radio on a long distance trip. As I drive further from a station’s transmitter, static gradually increases, eventually overwhelming the music in a homogenous buzz. Though the visual homogeneity created by these green mats tend to stifle my creativity (as they stifle native vegetation), I plan to return to this subject in the future.

SENTINELS IN SHADOW

I have lived in the same house for the past 20 years. Despite this, only quite recently did I become aware that the property is endowed with a permanent corps of indigenous protectors whom I refer to as Sentinels in Shadow (SIS). Although diminutive, I now appreciate that SIS guard my residence from all threats (real and imagined) by virtue of their unblinking gaze, stamina in combat, and paranormal abilities. Indeed, for as long as I have lived here, the house has never been breached by alien forces to the best of my knowledge. SIS members are understandably reticent to display their movements. However, if one was to look beneath low growing foliage between dusk and dawn, it is possible to momentarily observe them as they furtively leave their daytime quarters to secure the perimeter.

FORBIDDEN PLEASURES

Skin is our biggest sensory organ. It both connects us through touch and creates a boundary separating our being from the external world. Despite some ambiguity in the subjects of these images, the only body parts depicted are hands and fingers. I used an in-camera microscope function with a tripod, as well as some post-processing to enhance their visceral quality.

LIFE SENTENCES

I used to think that zoos create opportunities for conservation education and some connection for urban dwellers with the natural world. But a recent visit to Washington’s National Zoo convinced me otherwise. Zoos could fulfill their conservation functions without putting incarcerated animals on display in unnatural spaces that serve the public’s voyeuristic impulses. But by doing so, zoos enshrine our separation from nature and dominance over other species. Acknowledging that some species on display are endangered, I even question whether it makes sense to preserve a species in zoos whose natural habitat has disappeared.

LIFE FORCES

In most Māori creation traditions, Tāne created the forests. His parents, Ranginui (sky father) and Papatūānuku (earth mother), had produced many children while lying in a close embrace. The children became frustrated with living in darkness between their parents, and decided to push the pair apart.  Tāne created the forests when he separated his parents.  Trees in the forest are believed to hold apart the earth and sky, so light can come into the world. As god of the forest, Tāne presides over its plants and birds.  Because the forest was vital for Māori life, Tāne became very important in tribal traditions.

In Māori tradition, the health and vitality of the birds and trees in the forest is the result of the forest’s life forces. This exhibit consists of images made in early 2020, when my spouse and I had the opportunity to immerse ourselves in the west coast of New Zealand’s south island.  Much of the landscape reflects the region’s high rainfall conditions, with its beech and nikau palm forests, luxuriant understory vegetation, and dense moss cover.  During our hikes, I found it easy to imagine that the forest itself, not just its individual constituents, was an ancient living entity with its own energy and spirit. 

BERSERKER ROCKS

Iceland’s Eyrbyggja Saga is thought to have been written in the 13th century. In this saga, a ‘berserker’was promised the hand of a local resident’s daughter if he cleared a path
through a local lava field, but was instead rewarded with murder upon completion of
the task. As the tale goes, a 10th century farmer called Viga-Styrr had
two Swedish Berserkers who worked for him. One of the men fell in love
with the farmer’s daughter and asked to marry her. While the farmer wanted to
refuse he was a little afraid of doing so. He consulted with the local chieftain. The
lord suggested he allow the marriage if the berserker would first complete an
impossible task. The chieftain proposed forging a road through the rugged lava
field in one day. If they did, Styr wouldn’t have to travel such a long distance
around it when he wanted to get to the other side to where his brother lived.
The berserker agreed. He and his compatriot set to work right away, putting all
their “berserk” aggressive energy to the task. They finished before
sundown. Simultaneously pleased about the road and alarmed by his prospective
son-in-law, the farmer invited the two Berserkers to relax their tired muscles
in a special sauna he had built for them. The sauna was designed to be a trap, however, and the
farmer killed both and buried them.

UNREPORTED CRIME SCENES

The first police crime laboratory was established in 1910 in Lyon, France, by Edmond Locard. According to Locard’s “exchange principle,” it is impossible for criminals to escape a crime scene without leaving behind trace evidence that can be used to identify them. That principle gave rise to the forensic sciences, which are the accumulated methods for developing and analyzing physical evidence from crime scenes. Crime-scene investigation, which is often performed by experts known as crime-scene investigators (CSIs), involves the careful gathering of such evidence, which is then analyzed at a crime laboratory, and presented at trial.

At first glance, the disparate snapshots selected for this exhibit appear both innocent and unconnected.  Upon closer examination, patterns may begin to emerge at the darker edges of imagination.  Reputable sources have claimed that these images may capture crime scenes -- some are crimes of passion, others of property, and yet others of aesthetic violations. To the extent that the images are indicative of nefarious activities, some appear to have been perpetrated quite recently, while others are cold cases. Still other scenes purportedly depict the locale of heinous acts that have yet to be committed...

ALTERNATIVE FACTS

Wind and Water and Stone

The water hollowed the stone,
the wind dispersed the water,
the stone stopped the wind.
Water and wind and stone.

The wind sculpted the stone,
the stone is a cup of water,
The water runs off and is wind.
Stone and wind and water.

The wind sings in its turnings,
the water murmurs as it goes,
the motionless stone is quiet.
Wind and water and stone.

One is the other and is neither:
among their empty names
they pass and disappear,
water and stone and wind.

Octavio Paz

OUR INNER FISH

My yoga teacher recently remarked that we were all once fish. None of the creationists in class voiced an objection; however, I was unsure about the dictum “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny,” that I recalled from high school biology. The dictum put forward by the evolutionary biologist Ernst Haeckel at the end of the nineteenth century postulates that embryos re-experience the evolutionary process that their pseudo-ancestors underwent. According to this theory, during its development in its mother’s womb, the human embryo first displays the characteristics of a fish (including gills), then those of a reptile, and finally those of a human. I found that this theory is now thoroughly debunked. Human embryos never form gill slits; they do develop pharyngeal pouches. In fish, these pouches develop into gills, but in reptiles, mammals, and birds, they develop into other structures.

Still, as scientist Neil Shubin reminds us in his book “Finding Your Inner Fish,” our modern human anatomies are influenced by the life forms that came before us.  Life on Earth is thought to have begun somewhere around 3.5 billion years ago. Somewhere around 430 million years ago, plants and invertebrates colonized the bare earth, creating a land rich in food and resources, while fish evolved from ancestral aquatic vertebrates. It was another 30 million years before those prehistoric fish crawled out of the ocean.

As part of my continuing interest in using photography to show different ways in which humans (including myself) interact with the natural world, I spent a rainy day inside the National Aquarium in Baltimore.  Normally, when we humans look from above into the reflective surface of a body of water, we can only wonder what life might lie below that surface. By shifting our perspective down beneath the surface, the Aquarium brings us face to face with our otherwise unseen evolutionary past.  Given that most of this history was spent under water, it’s no surprise that we find ourselves entranced with that medium and the ability of aquatic animals to glide so comfortably and gracefully through it.

LANDSCAPES OF PEOPLE

While hiking in Iceland in 2019, my spouse and I met a couple of guys from India.  We four remarked on how different the Icelandic landscape is from the Indian landscape.  “In India,” one fellow hiker said, “we have a landscape of people.” Indeed, India’s diverse humanity, makes the U.S. seem rather homogeneous by comparison.

I have visited India several times, starting in 1971 when I lived with a family in Pune as a college student.  Compared to the U.S., everyday life is more open to the street, whether it be commercial or spiritual activities. My experience over the years is that when I allowed myself to be open to engaging with strangers, I was generally rewarded with hospitality and warmth.  As I am contemplating one more visit, I decided to offer these street-shots from a 2012 trip, if only to remind myself of why I am so attracted to India’s people.

LOST CITIES

I made the first four images during a visit to Tikal, a Mayan archeological site in Guatemala.  The remaining images are from the Angkor Wat complex in Cambodia.  Though the two technically-sophisticated cultures that produced these cities could hardly be more different, the reasons for their decline bear some similarities.  Though several centuries apart (Tikal is much older), neither are believed to have developed sufficient resilience to large swings in the availability of local natural resources. 

For its part, Tikal was at one time an important city in the Mayan Empire.  According to Jared Diamond in Collapse, among the reasons the Mayan Empire collapsed is that its leaders failed to recognize that population growth was outstripping available resources, much less take action to address that existential problem. “Their attention was evidently focused on their short term concerns of enriching themselves, waging wars, erecting monuments, competing with each other, and extracting enough food from the peasants to support all these activities.”    Jared Diamond summarizes sequential reasons for the collapse of cultures — failure to anticipate the risk, failure to recognize the problem when it materializes, failure to make a plan to address it, failure to implement the plan.  We may look back on Tikal and Angkor Wat with a degree of smugness; however, who is to say that our cities and highways will not one day be overgrown with vines? Nature always bats last.     

I used a sepia tone in these images to mimic old style photographs that might have been taken by early 20th century explorers like Percy Fawcett.  In 1925, at the age of 58, Fawcett headed into the jungles of Brazil to find a mysterious lost city he called “Z”.  He and his team would vanish without a trace and the story would turn out be one of the biggest news stories of his day. Despite countless rescue missions, Fawcett was never found.

COUNTRY AIR

The images in this exhibit are made from digitized square negatives. The first six images were taken in 1976, when I visited an Antique Tractor Pull, an annual event that has now been held well over 50 years and is one of Wisconsin’s largest shows. I was living at the time in a rented farmhouse outside of Hortonville, Wisconsin.  The other images were made during walks that I took in the local countryside. As I passed neighbors sitting on their front porches, they gave a friendly wave, but it was clear I would always be considered an outsider. I recall a neighbor asking during one evening stroll whether I was out taking in “a little country air...?” In retrospect, though I lived in that community for over two years, I wonder if I really understood much about it. 

SAND GARDENS

In this set of images, I explore the Buddhist principle of impermanence.  My subject is Great Sand Dunes National Park in southern Colorado, which I visited in early May, 2019.  Not coincidentally, I stayed at the Crestone Mountain Zen Center, about an hour away.  Seen from a distance, these massive landforms appear as timeless as the surrounding mountains.  Up close, however, it is apparent that they are constantly shifting and sculpted by wind.  As I struggled to ascend these piles of loose sand (up to seven hundred feet high), my footsteps were quickly obscured by the grains that I disturbed along my plodding way.  The spring winds became increasingly intense the higher I climbed.  Eventually, chaotically stinging particles made photography impossible because of the danger to both my equipment and my eyes.

Because of travel logistics, I visited the Park when the sun was high and its light relatively flat across the sandscape.  Thus, I used post-production adjustments to emphasize patterns of clouds and shadows.

LIFE ON THE PLAINS

In May, 2018, I visited Pawnee National Grasslands in north central Colorado, as well as some of the surrounding towns.  These extensive Grasslands are hardly undisturbed prairie habitat, having been exploited over time by cattle barons, farmers, oil and gas developers, and most recently wind farm operators.  Homesteaders began moving into the area in the mid-1880s, though the drought years of that decade severely constrained agricultural pursuits in the area. The early 20th century was more prosperous for farmers due to above-average rainfall. Expansion of the Homestead Act coupled with increased grain prices due to World War I saw additional virgin grasslands plowed under. By the early 1930s, however, wheat prices fell and persistent drought (the Dust Bowl) drove agriculture away. 

As a complement to the romantic sentiments expressed in the lyrics above, in this exhibit I try to suggest the harsh challenges of making a life on the plains.  Even with a car, I found distances to be daunting. I have to imagine that loneliness was pervasive among early homesteaders.  Most of the images show some type of interaction between human economic activities and the landscape.  Grain silos and other sturdy infrastructure depict successes in taming the prairie.  Three of the photographs show details from old grave sites and an abandoned general store in the ghost town of Keota, which was established as a homestead in 1880 by two sisters, and now sit isolated in the middle of the Grasslands. 

REFRACTED WORLDS

In this series, I offer an exploration into an imaginary world folded back on itself, one which operates under its own logic.  I use a reflection function in my point-and-shoot camera that allows me to compose the mirrored images in real time.

MIDNIGHT IN THE GARDEN

A brief morning stop in Bonaventure Cemetery was part of an April, 2019, weekend visit to Savannah, Georgia —just enough time for me to appreciate the cemetery’s haunting atmosphere (constructed on the grounds of an older plantation); also a sense of hope within a contained space full of loss. I include a few images from elsewhere in Savannah as well.

GRINNELL, IOWA, 1973

During my senior year at college (1972-73), I lived with my girlfriend in an off-campus apartment, above a florist in downtown Grinnell, Iowa.  We lived in the rear apartment, and an older couple (Joe and Cecile Schwab) lived in the front.  The Schwabs acted as surrogate grandparents, and kindly allowed me to take photos of them and their apartment.  Mrs. Schwab liked collectibles. Mr. Schwab rarely left his chair.

Besides the images of the Schwabs and their apartment, the others are from the same period.  The older man on the steps leading up to my apartment is Sam Berman, senior member of one of the only Jewish families in Grinnell at the time.  Mr. Berman owned a metal salvage yard (shown in two images), an occupation which I have read was acceptable for Jews spreading throughout small town Midwest.  (It didn’t occur to me when I met Mr. Berman our respective family histories have some parallels. My father’s father, upon arriving as a teen in Chicago from the Ukraine in the early 1900s, made his living re-purposing scrap leather from the Chicago stockyards and built a business that my father later inherited.) I did not have the presence of mind to correct Mrs. Schwab when she referred to Mr. Berman as “Sam the Jew”. This was my first direct experience with such attitudes, though they were apparently common among Grinnell townspeople, according to a local historian.

The train tracks shown bisect Grinnell.  They were the subject of an urban legend about an enterprising college student who wired them to the transmitter of the low wattage college radio station in order to magnify its broadcast range.  The image of roaming kids was taken downtown. Given that the girl in front is holding a half-eaten candy bar, the photo likely predates the era of “no shirt, no shoes, no service.”

GAIA GUARDIANS

In animistic spiritual traditions, elements of the world are thought to have an inner life or consciousness not readily accessible to human perception. If consciousness is an integral part of the physical world, then there is an immense amount of invisible inner experience going on all around us that is presently inaccessible to humans.

In order for me to be able to observe and record these otherwise unseen consciousnesses, I activated an in-camera reflection tool. As I move my camera across the landscape, I simply have to be patient and wait for them to emerge into my visual field.  In my imagination, they are silent and omnipresent guardians of our world.

A FAMILY OF TREES

In October, 2018, I was invited by the owners of a patch of old growth forest in Bath County, Virginia, to camp on their property.  Their forest is under existential threat due to its being in the right-of-way for the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, and there had been a protest encampment that summer.  (As of January, 2019, the landowners had not been served with eminent domain documents.) 

In these photos, I try to capture my experience of Shinrin-yoku, which translates from Japanese to “taking in the forest atmosphere” or “forest bathing”.  I include a photo of a carved wooden infant that had been nestled at the base of a “grandmother” tree called Ona during the interfaith blessing. 

IRISH PATHWAYS

According to Irish legend, Samhain is the time of year when portals to the “otherworld” open, allowing the souls of the dead to cross into our world. More modern festivities taking place around All Hallows Eve carry on these Celtic traditions in a Christian context. While visiting some medieval sites in Ireland during Samhain, 2017, I imagined spirits of the departed inhabiting the ancient stones and crumbling edifices, fields and pathways. Sites represented in these photos span almost 1,000 years (in some cases of almost constant human habitation). They include a hedgerow near Kilkenny, a River Maigue streambank where women did their washing, Kells Priory, the Rock of Cashel, Glendalough Monastery, and Jerpoint and Quinn Abbeys.

FLEETING ENCOUNTERS

In the following images, I use long exposures to ofrer an impression of the energy trails that we humans leave in out wake as we go through our everyday lives.