May 2014
Artist’s Statement
Greenhouses are a metaphor for man’s relationship with seasons. We plant, grow, harvest, wait. We also seek to control, to extend, to bend nature to fit our ideals and desires.
Behind an abandoned mansion built in the early 1920s is a greenhouse with a different relationship to the seasons. On this plot of earth the seasons control the greenhouse. Here man’s impulses for speed, control and bounty have been displaced by the slow, inexorable power of nature to reclaim its own.
Biography
Community is central to my life and art. I am repeatedly driven to step into the “town square” to engage in the work of making my community a better place. And every time I venture out with my camera, I carry with me that core impulse. I am also a fifth-generation Georgian – actually a fifth-generation Jewish Georgian – and the rich complexities of the American South, and of being a minority in the South, shape me and my art. History and culture, geography and race, tradition and conflict, injustice and progress… these entangled strands I carry with me as well.
The subjects and stories to which my eye is drawn are shaped by these foundational forces. To them I bring my aesthetic, which is quite structured. My early influences were not photographic. Rather they came from painting and collage: Pablo Picasso’s composition, Edward Hopper’s light, Louise Nevelson’s rhythm. These and others helped me develop the creative language for my own work: line, pattern, color, movement, balance.
And there is also storytelling, with its fertile tradition in both Southern and Jewish cultures. I relish the power of story. Each photograph I make contains embedded narrative, and each represents a coming together of curiosity, discovery, creativity and joy.
