In America (1986), Baudrillard observed that the American smile is not an expression of genuine happiness but a kind of social contract — a permanent, obligatory display of openness and goodwill. It signals “I am not a threat” rather than…
Somewhere in the writings of Buddhist nun Pema Chodron (), there is a passage in which she remarks that self-knowledge can arrive like looking in a mirror and finding a gorilla staring back at you. You feel horrible, just the…
Difficult images are a particular preoccupation of mine. Following Susan Sontag’s framework, I use “difficult” to mean images that are emotionally or morally demanding to look at — images that resist passive consumption and implicate the viewer, the maker, and…
Recently, I was traveling through the upper Midwest (Nebraska, South Dakota) and had the opportunity to meet up with a long-time friend and not-often-enough collaborator, Éireann Lorsung. While we were catching up, the sticky subject of AI-generated imagery came up.…
Image of a white geodesic dome resting on flat ground like an artifact from a future that never arrived. Utopia doesn’t always recede; sometimes it becomes an iconic form. The geometry is declarative, almost didactic—a structure that believes in efficiency,…
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” — Buckminster Fuller I found this earthen home pressed into the prairie hillside in Northern Nebraska. This house…
A moment in the Portland Airport, reflecting on Foucault’s concept of heterotopia and Augé’s notion of non-places. Continuing to experiment with adapting older lenses onto a contemporary mirrorless body. In this case, I’m using a Canon 50mm SSC f1.4 lens…
Image made of the topography maps of Orcas Island in Washington. Obscured by collected water and condensation, the map becomes as abstruse as the landscape in the mist.
Photograph of a stationary travel trailer patched, repainted, and marked by repeated dark motifs along its windows. The image operates as a comparative surface in which manufactured tones and atmospheric color coexist but do not resolve. The structure can be…
Photograph of a wooden gate marked by a blue arrow aligned against an open sky. The image functions as a comparative device: an informal cyanometer in which pigment and atmosphere are read against one another. Historically, cyanometers measured the sky…
Photograph of the La Farge Library building in Santa Fe, NM under clear sky. Painted form and atmosphere align in hue. The image operates as a comparative surface rather than a view: an informal cyanometer in which architectural blue is…
Translation of a photographic image from the Liberal Hooker Corridor project into a carved surface. The act of re-drawing slows the photographic process and converts a contemporary structure into a patterned, repeatable flattened form. The print functions as a secondary…
Photograph made under the undulating jingles of the Denver International Airport’s underground tramway system. Each of the cars was empty of passengers, despite it being a peak travel day after Thanksgiving holiday. The crumpled toilet paper that (somehow) wandered into…
Image made while kayaking the Willamette River in rural Oregon. The deadfall tree was washed onto a temporary alluvial island in the river and then embellished with the addition of a copyright sign. A wildfire fighting helicopter trained overhead, there…
Night view through the windows of the Milwaukee Museum of Art addition (designed by Santiago Calatrava, completed in 2001). The frame records a surface where institutional space and exterior ground merge. The image brackets a cultural node within a larger…