Like Someplace Else
Uncanny seascape photos taken over the years conjure both memory and mystery. For example, the photo of a crab boat approaching to tow a sailboat reminds me of the time my fast-thinking husband boated out to tow a couple on a sinking pontoon boat. Of course we had the rescued couple over for drinks. Another, more abstract photo shows the twin spans bridge that goes from New Orleans to Slidell behind shadowed oak branches over blue water and an orange sky, evoking a calm Where am I? stillness.
The city skyline photo under a swirl of gold and orange painted-looking sky was taken from my bedroom balcony. It shows proximity to New Orleans across the water, but from this angle my hometown seems unrecognizable. Even though I’ve lived on the north shore of Louisiana’s Lake Pontchartrain for more than 20 years, it still always feels like I am someplace else.
The lake — really a 630 square mile estuary, feeds out to the gulf through the Rigolets strait near my home. It’s one of the largest wetlands along the North American Gulf Coast covering more than 125,000 acres. From New Orleans’ Four Seasons Hotel’s 30th floor observatory at Canal Street and the Mississippi River, the lake appears as vast as an ocean! Happily, my perspective from Slidell, Louisiana has been more intimate.
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Surrender
Every surprise imaginable happened to me when I returned to the South after years of living in Manhattan. For example, an alligator once greeted me on my walk to my mailbox!
Yielding to the power of coincidence, this long term photo project from 2009 to 2020 finds forsaken offerings from things both familiar and bewildering in what’s been abandoned, feared, or cast off. Photographed on hikes, these nature landscapes, still life and animal portraits are from New Orleans (and near home in Slidell, Louisiana), Ainsley, Mississippi, Bayou La Batre and Point Clear, Alabama, Asheville, North Carolina, Kissimmee and Miami, Florida.
There is something quietly spectacular about being alone in places potent with meaning.
Editing this series during lockdown my thoughts circled back to what we know for sure about life. I’m asking questions about memory and what survives and remains in the South and why?
And are we out of the woods yet?
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Ephemeral Aquatics:
Abstract shoreline photos intuit life forms and open an interplay dialogue for both viewer and creator. While most transcend recognized forms, some are discernible after a longer gaze. When you think you know what something is, for example, then it turns out to be something completely different. Or you’re correct in an assumption, but you see the subject in a new light.
These were my thoughts in creating this long-term portfolio of prints with an edition of nine.
Created as found by seeing patterns, reflections, light sources and movement, (as opposed to process or materials), the act of creating in order to reflect and extrapolate feelings by investigating color and compositional balance best describes my process.
What is it about being near water that stirs the soul?
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Linger Then Stay
Preoccupied for days by thoughts of tsunamis while hiking the Oregon coast, (from numerous warning signs), I finally decided to quit worrying about them. “After all” a friend joked, “there wouldn’t be time to escape.”
Once I let that sink in the sea to forest magic unfolded.
Linear landscapes recall an innocent time before the pandemic. Taken in July of 2015, I was still reeling from calamities at home in coastal Louisiana. This trip was a balm.
Locations include Cape Perpetua, Corballis, Driftwood Beach, Newport, Waldport and Yachats, Oregon.
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Lush, Calm and Voluptuous
Focusing on the quiet moments, I saw a way to articulate a slice of life inspired by Matisse after finding myself in a much more natural environment after living in big cities. As if I were among wild beasts!
It’s the fluid moments when you recognize something in yourself that can be translated in a photo.
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Leaving Las Vegas
The starting point for an ongoing Western landscape series, departing Las Vegas became a new subject because I needed to flee neon. How to describe the gritty feel of walking the gauntlet of hawkers along the gaudy strip then driving out of town to photograph nature? Moving away from the center, the transition in terrain matched my mood from tense to calm. While I did not photograph plastic bags in wire fences around the homeless tent city, I did capture a titanium plant explosion while a partially hidden Zombie Bus with painted machine guns had me at hello in these shoot ‘em out times.
I was thinking of the film Leaving Las Vegas where an alcoholic screenwriter and a prostitute fall in love amidst shiny lights and lurking danger. This series imagines that they drove out of town to escape the script’s bleak ending.
Although none of the photographs overtly refer to the mass shooting on the strip in October of 2018, the massacre's memory permeated my being. In returning the next year to formally finish this project I remembered something else: I was trying to flee the sadness of losing a friend.
Uncanny seascape photos taken over the years conjure both memory and mystery. For example, the photo of a crab boat approaching to tow a sailboat reminds me of the time my fast-thinking husband boated out to tow a couple on a sinking pontoon boat. Of course we had the rescued couple over for drinks. Another, more abstract photo shows the twin spans bridge that goes from New Orleans to Slidell behind shadowed oak branches over blue water and an orange sky, evoking a calm Where am I? stillness.
The city skyline photo under a swirl of gold and orange painted-looking sky was taken from my bedroom balcony. It shows proximity to New Orleans across the water, but from this angle my hometown seems unrecognizable. Even though I’ve lived on the north shore of Louisiana’s Lake Pontchartrain for more than 20 years, it still always feels like I am someplace else.
The lake — really a 630 square mile estuary, feeds out to the gulf through the Rigolets strait near my home. It’s one of the largest wetlands along the North American Gulf Coast covering more than 125,000 acres. From New Orleans’ Four Seasons Hotel’s 30th floor observatory at Canal Street and the Mississippi River, the lake appears as vast as an ocean! Happily, my perspective from Slidell, Louisiana has been more intimate.
##
Surrender
Every surprise imaginable happened to me when I returned to the South after years of living in Manhattan. For example, an alligator once greeted me on my walk to my mailbox!
Yielding to the power of coincidence, this long term photo project from 2009 to 2020 finds forsaken offerings from things both familiar and bewildering in what’s been abandoned, feared, or cast off. Photographed on hikes, these nature landscapes, still life and animal portraits are from New Orleans (and near home in Slidell, Louisiana), Ainsley, Mississippi, Bayou La Batre and Point Clear, Alabama, Asheville, North Carolina, Kissimmee and Miami, Florida.
There is something quietly spectacular about being alone in places potent with meaning.
Editing this series during lockdown my thoughts circled back to what we know for sure about life. I’m asking questions about memory and what survives and remains in the South and why?
And are we out of the woods yet?
##
Ephemeral Aquatics:
Abstract shoreline photos intuit life forms and open an interplay dialogue for both viewer and creator. While most transcend recognized forms, some are discernible after a longer gaze. When you think you know what something is, for example, then it turns out to be something completely different. Or you’re correct in an assumption, but you see the subject in a new light.
These were my thoughts in creating this long-term portfolio of prints with an edition of nine.
Created as found by seeing patterns, reflections, light sources and movement, (as opposed to process or materials), the act of creating in order to reflect and extrapolate feelings by investigating color and compositional balance best describes my process.
What is it about being near water that stirs the soul?
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Linger Then Stay
Preoccupied for days by thoughts of tsunamis while hiking the Oregon coast, (from numerous warning signs), I finally decided to quit worrying about them. “After all” a friend joked, “there wouldn’t be time to escape.”
Once I let that sink in the sea to forest magic unfolded.
Linear landscapes recall an innocent time before the pandemic. Taken in July of 2015, I was still reeling from calamities at home in coastal Louisiana. This trip was a balm.
Locations include Cape Perpetua, Corballis, Driftwood Beach, Newport, Waldport and Yachats, Oregon.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lush, Calm and Voluptuous
Focusing on the quiet moments, I saw a way to articulate a slice of life inspired by Matisse after finding myself in a much more natural environment after living in big cities. As if I were among wild beasts!
It’s the fluid moments when you recognize something in yourself that can be translated in a photo.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Leaving Las Vegas
The starting point for an ongoing Western landscape series, departing Las Vegas became a new subject because I needed to flee neon. How to describe the gritty feel of walking the gauntlet of hawkers along the gaudy strip then driving out of town to photograph nature? Moving away from the center, the transition in terrain matched my mood from tense to calm. While I did not photograph plastic bags in wire fences around the homeless tent city, I did capture a titanium plant explosion while a partially hidden Zombie Bus with painted machine guns had me at hello in these shoot ‘em out times.
I was thinking of the film Leaving Las Vegas where an alcoholic screenwriter and a prostitute fall in love amidst shiny lights and lurking danger. This series imagines that they drove out of town to escape the script’s bleak ending.
Although none of the photographs overtly refer to the mass shooting on the strip in October of 2018, the massacre's memory permeated my being. In returning the next year to formally finish this project I remembered something else: I was trying to flee the sadness of losing a friend.
