A famous photographer once said “we are like hunters, except we don’t kill.” Thanks to a rural upbringing that included both hunting and exposure to photography, this analogy always resonated with me: a heightened awareness of one’s surroundings, the elusive nature of the subject, and the urgency that accompanies the small movement of the index finger are common to both practices. As to the question “what I am hunting,” the answer has been evolving. I grew up in a rural environment where landscapes altered by human activity had a wistful poetry. For me, weathered silos, fences, barns and hay bales were abstract forms as well as icons of the rural Midwest. Nature would occasionally burst into this setting in her full glory. This could be a tree trunk, a blanket of snow, or sunbeams that seemed providential. Searching for rhythm, form and sense in this visual universe gave me the building blocks of my approach to photography.

I have spent most of my adult life in Chicago and I am fascinated by the ways in which the city’s identity is inscribed in its unassuming details. Chicago is a city of iconic architecture and urban design but thatís not what interests me the most. Rather, I am drawn to those visual elements that unwittingly manifest themselves as various functions of the city unfold. A blank billboard in an empty lot looks like a tabula rasa for Chicago, yet at the same time it articulates urban solitude. A cement factory at night is a glimpse of the city’s industrial edge; it is also a potential crime scene, if only in the way it makes me feel as I’m capturing it. And cracks on a wall make me feel more like a failed palm reader than a hunter as I try to decipher their significance. I approach people the same way I do other elements of urban scenes; they are anonymous and often even faceless, like those buildings that lack the signature of storied architects. Yet they are graceful and each one is a distinct piece of mosaic in the city’s larger physiognomy.

I work with a range of cameras: a 4X5 view camera, a DSLR, and occasionally my phone. I think of each camera as having its own language and I am interested in how each one mediates my experience of the city.