My journey with photography began in the early 1970s when I learned black and white photography in a high school class and contributed photos to the newspaper and yearbook. In college I continued shooting on my own and contributed photos to student publications. I immersed myself in the history of photography and at about this time began to think of myself as a serious photographer / artist.

My formal education was in modern languages. I studied Spanish and French in college, and I have done some study of German as an adult. My background is literary, with a B.A. in French from Portland State University and a Maîtrise de Lettres Modernes from the University of Avignon.

I have taken a number of photography classes but have learned more through looking at other photographers’ work, through discussion with fellow artists, through reading art criticism, and through involvement with a photography exhibition space and an art gallery.

I spent six months in Central America and a year in France as an undergraduate, and I was awarded a French Ministry of Education Teaching Fellowship after graduation from college. I was photographing extensively during this time. The year in Marseilles teaching English in a high school led to the publication of A Second Year in France in 1982. It is a sequence of five chronological chapters that depict the shape of my experience. Having a published book opened some doors for me, including a brief correspondence with John Szarkowski, curator at MOMA in New York.

During the years 1980 to 1983 I lived in Portland and photographed extensively while working on the book. I made a conscious decision not to join other young people striking out from Portland to more happening places or to study photography formally by doing an MFA degree. I was already doing what I wanted and did not like the idea of jumping through hoops to please someone else. During this time I became associated with Blue Sky Gallery, a photography exhibition space in Portland.

From 1983 to 1985 I was again in France in Avignon, where I taught English as a lecturer at the University of Avignon. Another photographic book, France Revisited, an artist’s book, resulted from these years. The book paired photographs with texts that explored cultural differences as well as the experience of being an expatriate. In the summers of 1984 and 1985 I worked as an interpreter at the Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie in Arles interpreting for Mary Ellen Mark, Christopher James, Lewis Baltz, and Bruce Davidson.

In the mid to late 80’s I was back in Portland, teaching French at local colleges and then at a private high school. Building on some earlier manipulated work, organized in the artist’s book Transgressions, I began using photographs in collage work as well as in cut-out portrait sequences. I had shows locally, did numerous portrait commissions, and joined a co-op art gallery. I corresponded with and visited Robert Adams whose work and writings I admired and collaborated with Lewis Baltz on his book San Quentin Point.

1994 saw me in Saarbrücken, Germany, with my then French wife. I studied German and worked on collections of photographs displayed in jars housed in wooden cabinets. I stayed in Germany for 6 years but in the summer I was in Oregon for shows at Gallery 114 in Portland. After a few years I began teaching English at the Deutsch-Französiches Gymnasium in Saarbrücken.

In 2001 I was back in Oregon, soon to be divorced, and once again at Gallery 114 in Portland. My work from this time became large collages using photographs cut out as letters that formed texts. I also began exploring my extensive collection of negatives and printing series of photos for shows.

Starting in 2004 I worked as a language teacher in local public schools and since retiring in 2023 I have been working on photography books full time. My goal is to offer novel formal and thematic contributions to the contemporary photobook conversation, and I have created books such as A Year in Avignon, A Day at the Lake, Jacqueline Takes Me to the Market, and Photobook / Journal that use images and text to share the experience of a specific time and place.