The American photographer, Walker Evans called photographs transcendent documents. He believed that a photograph could possess specific content that captured a moment in time with cultural resonance, and at the same time, transcended all of that, to evoke a state of mind. Alfred Stieglitz used the word equivalents as the title of a group of images he made of clouds, seeing them as equivalents of psychological or emotional states. In literature, it’s called the objective correlative, a phrase coined by T.S. Elliott as the only way of expressing emotion in the form of art by identifying objects, a situation, a chain of events that evoke a ‘particular emotion’. Or to put it another way, the gap between saying an emotion and expressing one, is the objective correlative.

I have been a story teller my entire professional life. First as a filmmaker, using the language of cinema, and now as a photographer and writer. In my work as a photographer, I am deeply interested in making photographs that transcend the specific content of my image. I want my images to possess a there there. Borrowing from the language of literature, I strive to make photographs that are metaphorically resonant. There is more to be expressed than beauty found in a landscape. There are stories to be imagined in the constructed images of a fantasy world. The human body represents more than a form in space. The power of images resides in the deeper meaning that is evoked.

To be sure, I want to make work that is inspired by the social and political issues of the day, but more than that, I want to create photographs that move the viewer. Stir up emotions. All kinds of emotions, even the ones that make us uncomfortable.