Winter strips the trees down to their innermost, leaving the bare branches stretched out in patient acceptance. They lie in wait, as we must if we enter a difficult wintertime of the soul, so leaves can burst forth once more when the time is right. In the meantime, the trees are comforted by the memory of summers past and by visions of springs yet to come. The tiny twigs still clutch the last few precious leaves of autumn as they sift the air for tidings of their beloved.

The trees in these photographs are from places that carry many memories for me, near where I live in the Santa Cruz mountains, and near where I grew up in Connecticut. Just as memories are built up over time, forming complex webs of repetition and reinterpretation, the photographs in this series are built up from multiple exposures. Since my digital Hasselblad camera does not have the built-in ability to capture multiple exposures, I had to create my own method by leaving the shutter open for a long time and uncovering the lens for each exposure. Since I'm never sure quite what the result will be, the process is full of surprises and serendipity, just like the process of forming and finding memories.

The images themselves are varied, just like our memories. Some are light and ethereal, while others are darker and shrouded in mystery. Some are clearly recognizable as trees, while others are more abstract, further removed from the original by all the built-up layers. Overall, I seek a contemplative and mysterious feeling in these images, as if from a secret, misty forest that lies partway between this world and another. The simple geometric compositions contrast with the endless complexity of the branches receding into the distance. Various influences for this series include looping music by Steve Reich and Zoe Keating, fractal imagery, and works by Richard Diebenkorn, Cy Twombly, and Jackson Pollack.

The images are captured using a digital medium-format Hasselblad camera, and printed as archival pigment prints. I use the highly-textured Hahnemuehle William Turner paper and float the prints in the frames, creating end results that resemble drawings, blurring the line between our external and internal realities, between this world and the world of our memories.

This series of photographs has emerged from my thinking about spirituality and language, about how to express the inexpressible. As I explore my spirituality, I am struck by how difficult it is to describe the divine. How many treatises are needed to explain what the word ‘God’ means? Why do so many religious traditions use verbal gymnastics like “he is all things in everything and nothing in anything”? Having a Ph.D. in Linguistics has helped me appreciate the huge expressive power of language, but it still falls short in trying to describe the mystery of the divine. Words can point you in the right direction, but after a certain point you have to go beyond them, into the space beyond words.

The images are based on phrases that have been particularly meaningful to me in my thinking about spirituality. I write the phrases over and over again, meditating on their meaning. After filling up a number of pages with a repeated phrase, I stack the sheets on top of one another and photograph them lit from beneath, so you see layer upon layer showing through. Each layer of words adds meaning and echoes what came before, but also partially obscures the original message. In the same way, as spiritual ideas are passed down through time, layers of interpretation and reinterpretation are built up, until the result may not match the original intent.

The photographs only show small parts of the writing, so the full phrase cannot be read. Even individual letters may be difficult to make out due to the multiple layers of writing, or because some phrases are written in other languages, like Russian or German. The difficulty in reading the letters and words reflects the difficulty we have in understanding the divine, and in describing it in words. When we let go of the literal meaning, other levels of meaning have a chance to appear.

Many of the photographs are light, reflecting the airy, ethereal nature often associated with the divine. Other photographs, however, are darker, because there are other sides to our relationship with the divine, as in John Donne’s “Batter my heart, three person’d God… That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend your force, to break, blow, burn and make me new.” Or in the lyrics of the pop singer P!nk, “Ave Mary A, where did you go? How did you know to get out of a world gone mad?” Darkness is an essential part of the human condition, and of our relationship with the divine. And, darkness helps us to better understand the light.

I was fascinated to see how some of these photographs echo ones from previous bodies of work, such as my Compositions series of electric wires, or my Meditations photographs of tar painted on asphalt. Some other sources of inspiration include the painters Richard Diebenkorn, Brice Marden, and Cy Twombly, the music of John Adams, Steve Reich, and J. S. Bach, and Karen Armstrong's book The Case for God.

The images are captured using a digital medium-format Hasselblad camera, and printed as archival pigment prints. I use a textured paper and float the prints in the frames, creating end results that resemble drawings, bringing the viewer closer to the original writing, and one step closer to the divine.

The photographs in this series reflect the music that I see when I look at electric wires overhead. The wires dance in an endless variety of rhythms, movements, and moods, sometimes simple and austere while at other times lyrical, forceful, or whimsical. Reflecting these different moods, the photographs are divided into five groups or ‘movements’: Gymnopédie, Gnosis, Generation, Angles and Jutes, and Dharma at Big Sur.

I am particularly drawn to the musical connotations of the wires because of my musical background, playing the flute in orchestras for a number of years and being a passionate devotee of classical music. I see many similarities between the rhythms and movement of music and photography. In particular, the photographs in this series remind me of the solo piano music of Erik Satie, such as his Gymnopédies, and of John Adam’s concerto for electric violin, Dharma at Big Sur, each of which lend their names to a movement in my series.

In addition to the musical themes, these photographs explore the notion of intersections, the contrast between order and chaos, and the tension between apparent spontaneity and careful underlying composition. The simple white backgrounds let the range of lines and rhythms take the forefront, like a solo piano alone on the stage. The scale and spatial orientation are ambiguous, and the space is mostly two-dimensional. These photographs also have a spiritual component, exploring the sacred mysteries hidden in the mundane man-made wires.

The images are captured using a medium-format Hasselblad camera, then scanned digitally and printed as archival pigment prints. I use the highly-textured Hahnemuehle Photo Rag paper and float the prints in the frames, creating an end result that resembles pen-and-ink drawings. By blurring the distinction between photograph and drawing, the prints play with notions of internal reality (imagined and then drawn by hand) versus external reality (captured with a camera).

The ancient oak tree stretches above you, bridging the earth and the sky with its gnarled mossy trunk and its intricate lattice of leaves, gently swaying in the breeze. You reach out and caress one of the leaves, velvety smooth and vibrantly green in the prime of its life. You trace its curves and lines, hills and valleys, rivers and bays, soft fingers and gentle spikes. Looking closer, so close that you are almost one with it, you see a new universe open up, a green world with a landscape of infinite complexity, carpeted in delicate white stars. There are imperfections too - the bites of insects, the spots of age - but even they are beautiful, an essential part of the harmonious whole. Layer upon layer, the leaves embrace each other as the breeze calms, resting silently as if eternity awaits.

This series of photographs celebrates the lifeblood of nature, to which we must remain connected for both the Earth's sake, and our own. I am fortunate to live surrounded by wonderful ancient oak trees, and they have helped me to reconnect with nature. By working so closely with the leaves, I have a newfound appreciation for the strength, diversity, and wonder of nature. Too often we don't appreciate the beauty of the trees, or we only see the beauty of the whole tree. There are more worlds of beauty waiting to be discovered in the leaves themselves.

I strive for a restrained feeling of grace and poise in these photographs, to reveal the mysterious beauty hidden inside the everyday. The language I use is one of simple forms, curves, lines and textures, often low-contrast and monochromatic (here, only using shades of green, rather than black and white). I often favor asymmetrical arrangements and objects barely glimpsed in the margins as essential parts of the compositions, helping maintain the dynamic feeling of balance. Meanwhile, like the Abstract Expressionists I use a flattened two-dimensional space to further distinguish the world of the photograph from our ordinary world.

I created these photographs by placing the leaves on a flatbed scanner, and scanning them directly. It was a new experience for me to make photographs without a camera, but the process lends itself well to zooming in on very small areas of the leaves, and let me very quickly adjust the photograph and redo it when need be. A few pieces involve a fair amount of digital editing, but most do not differ very significantly from how the original leaves looked. Using the highly-textured Hahnemuehle Photo Rag paper, I print the photographs as archival pigment prints.

As your eyes close, the world fades from view, and time slows down to the speed of breath. In - out… In - out. Your thoughts gradually flit away, like swallows darting off into the night, leaving you silent in the shapeless black, alone but not alone, cradled in the fullness of the void. Slowly, an image coalesces, a glimpse of another world, seen through veiled eyes...

This other world is one of calm and tranquility, measure and grace and consciousness. The photographs in this series offer views of that other world - faint and intangible, perhaps unfamiliar, but also calming and reassuring. Some images are darker and more assertive, like the over-active waking mind still encumbered by faults and complexes. Other images are more light and ethereal, as consciousness expands and negative emotions are replaced by positive ones. In the lightest photographs we may even get a hint of the end of suffering.

I strive for a restrained feeling of grace and poise in these photographs. The language I use is one of simple forms, curves, and lines, bathed in tones that are light, low-contrast and monochromatic. While the foregrounds and backgrounds at first appear to be undifferentiated grays, on closer inspection they reveal subtle variations and textures. Asymmetrical arrangements and objects barely glimpsed in the margins help to remind us that we're not necessarily seeing everything -- with expanded consciousness, things might look completely different. The flattened two-dimensional space further distinguishes the world of the photograph from our ordinary world.

While I associate these images with meditation, the literal subject matter is much more humble, tar on asphalt. Beauty is everywhere, often literally underfoot, just waiting to be seen. In some respects, these photographs are a collaboration with the workers who painted the tar on the asphalt to fix the cracks. On the other hand, the photographs also owe a debt to artists that have inspired me, including Aaron Siskind, Franz Kline, Ellsworth Kelly, and Harry Callahan. We are all part of a vast web of cause and effect, and no one knows where the strands we add will lead…

The images are captured using a medium-format Hasselblad camera, then scanned digitally and printed as archival pigment prints. I use the highly-textured Hahnemuehle Photo Rag paper and float the prints in the frames, creating an end result that resembles pen-and-ink drawings. By blurring the distinction between photograph and drawing, the prints play with notions of internal reality (imagined and then drawn by hand) versus external reality (captured with a camera).

In this early series of photographs, I explore the mysteries in man-made objects, such as doors, stairs, buildings, machinery, trains, and manhole covers.

I am naturally drawn to rhythms, tensions, and balance. Light and dark, sharp and curved, textured and smooth... I am fascinated by the interaction between opposing elements. A small dark shape packed with energy can be enough to counterweight an entire field of light. Or as a smooth arc slices across a solid, static background, it brings the background to life as it passes. A photograph is like a mobile - constantly balancing and counterweighting and dancing.

Some photographers that inspired this series include Harry Callahan, Imogen Cunningham, Aaron Siskind, and Brett Weston. I was am inspired by the music of composers like John Adams and Philip Glass, and by other visual arts such as Chinese calligraphy.