WAYPOINTS
Waypoints
When I was young, my parents would often throw my sister, the dog and I in the back of the station wagon and head out for a trip somewhere. For them, my dad especially, the going was as important getting somewhere, perhaps more so. From him, I learned that there was always something interesting just around the next bend in the road, and that anything could be of interest if you just took the time to look at it the right way. I have never lost the simple curiosity of just going out to see what there is to see. Later in life, as my dad began to lose his ability to remember things, I was struck by the fragility of memory, and indeed by exactly what constitutes memory. The photographer Sally Mann writes of memory eloquently in her book Hold Still, exploring the notion that photographs actually steal away our memories and what we remember are the photographic records and not really the moments themselves.
Over a period of several years, I travelled the Pacific Coast Highway in Washington, Oregon and California, stopping wherever something called out to me. These are not literal images of my childhood memories of exploration, but rather waypoints along the path to places where those memories might be waiting.
This work has been shown at Photo L.A., exhibited at Verve Gallery in Santa Fe, Camera Work Gallery in Portland, the Lishui Photo Festival in China and published in China Photographer Magazine and Plates-To-Pixels Magazine.
