Lighthouses

          Lighthouse: a structure that has two main functions; the first is to warn ships of hazardous areas, and the second is to serve as a navigational tool for sailors.

After losing my grandfather – the man who had given me my first camera - I drifted away from my faith, loved ones, and alienated myself from my surroundings. I developed a desperation for the presence of joy and light to resurface.

I was in a tiny boat being rocked relentlessly by waves and dragged along by currents in a sea of darkness and the small candle lighting my way was in real danger of going out. Once this candle went out I would have nothing to guide me and was utterly lost.

My first metaphorical lighthouse came into view on January 31st 2017, when my brother asked me to make a portrait of him with a view camera I had borrowed. I discovered a therapy in making photographs with a large format camera. The meticulous process and the attention it demanded absorbed my conscious mind and relieved me from the nightmares that plagued me.

Soon after this discovery I was gifted my Grandpa’s large format Pacemaker Speed Graflex that he used as an Army Photographer. I was able to memorialize my grandfather by using his camera to capture these lighthouses and through this I found peace on my search for joy.

I chose to shoot these images with film because I needed a tangible and physical reminder of the constant presence of joy, goodness, and light in my life. The irony of capturing positive moments on negatives reflected my internal healing and growth, and using a large format camera forced me to slow down and absorb each lighthouse as it came along.

Through photographing these metaphorical lighthouses every day since May 14th 2017, I have found there is indeed light, joy, and truth in the world. As a result, these images have allowed me to heal. Because of this healing, I was able to grow into a person who is able to see the good in situations that seem perfectly hopeless, and it is my hope that these images will show others that there is indeed light and joy in the world, no matter how dark it gets.

Athletes

     The world of the competitive athlete, in any sport, is a largely unseen place, where intense training of both the body and the mind are what is necessary to achieve greatness. Living with a high level athlete – my sister Hope Noelle, and my own experiences in competitive figure skating, have given me a unique insight into athletic training.

By photographing these three athletes in their primary training locations, whether a gym, ice rink, or stable, I was able to enter into the world of each for a brief time, and see for myself the amount of work that goes behind every public performance and competition.

Mentally, these athletes have to be able to push themselves through circumstances and physical pain. They pour their energy and emotions into what they do. Why? The answer is surprisingly simple: because they genuinely love what they do. Physically, these athletes have to be strong enough to get the job done on a daily basis, and maintain their bodies’ health in order to prevent injury. This requires additional training time, generally outside of their regular training environment.

My goal with this body of work is to lift the curtain of public performance and shed light on the dedication and hard work athletes put into doing what they love on a daily basis. I kept interactions with these athletes to what the lens of the camera allowed, and what they themselves were inclined to initiate. As a result, I was able to document an unfiltered training environment where the athletes felt free to express themselves. 

Faces

        The face is one of the most recognizable features of the human body. Every human being has a face. We can recognize loved ones by their smiles and close friends by their eyes. Faces can bring comfort and most of us have certain faces we enjoy more than others. On the flip side of this, the disfiguration of a face, because it is so prevalent in the lives of human beings is oftentimes disturbing and cause for anxiety, and the distortion and abstraction of the human face is often as horrifying as it is intriguing. Many a child (and adult) has lost sleep because of the oozing zombie or the crime scene victim’s horribly disfigured face.

I often find myself studying the faces of the humans around me, I admire scars and freckles, wrinkles and lines, bumps and bruises and wonder at what point in each face’s history that particular mark or abstraction appeared. I find the scars and history written on a person’s face to be one of the most beautiful things in this world, and each person’s face is their first impression to the world, what we face (pardon the pun) each day with. Our faces change as we change, and they reflect our experiences, serving as a unique type of personal history.

  I have translated my fascination with the abstracted human face into clay and created my own histories for each face that I make. Each face initially comes from a press mold and is then altered to make it unique while still following the basic recipe of a face: forehead, eyes, nose, mouth, chin. Each unique face is then altered – dropped, smashed, thrown, scratched, twisted, and otherwise abused. The lines, creases, gashes, and tears that result from this treatment are a history of the faces’ experiences, however unpleasant, in the same way our faces are a result of our physical experience during our time on this earth.

Prayer Vessels