About

Long after dark, I venture into bleak urban settings across the country, seeking out their dramatic stories and elusive splendor. These are corners rich in history, which I sift through in an attempt to revive the past, and to tell its tale in powerful yet subtle ways.

With the city humming in the background, I give myself the task of finding inspiration where there shouldn't be any. My alleys are an inverted reality. One doesn't associate life and joy, strength and hope with a dark and decaying alley, but they are there if we look closely.

With a family history of homelessness, and with the belief that I was next, I found the need to create monuments out of these irrelevant places.

My outings are a determined and intense adventure in what are often dangerous neighborhoods. Since 1991, this pilgrimage has repeatedly lead me to trouble. I've run from street gangs and I'm often questioned (or worse) by the police, who wonder why I'm lurking in dark alleys. Yet, within this acute urban decay, I find moments of peace in a hectic life.

Technical notes

My process is mostly traditional: I shoot color negative film with a 50-year-old Hasselblad camera. I rely on the ambient city light to give me a base of rich colors through long exposures - sometimes more than one hour. I also bring my own lights, with colored gels, which I use to further color these typically drab locations. I might light whole areas, little spots, or sometimes nothing at all.

The film is processed normally, then deep scanned to preserve the film grain. The image is then brought into Photoshop. The majority of digital work is based on my 20 years of color darkroom experience, where I frequently printed 30x40-inch prints. Burning/dodging and brightness/contrast constitute most of my digital work. The final prints are output on an Epson 9800, producing archival, state-of-the-art, Ultrachrome prints.