My photography, I have come to realize, is about time and change. My first “serious project” involved photographing the built environment of Southeastern Connecticut and especially my hometown, New London. The fast-paced changes of the 1970’s and 80’s sped the process by which the images became about the past, about what was there instead of what is there. While I was busy teaching myself how to make interesting pictures, I became an “accidental historian.”

My attention turned to the landscape. Wooded areas cleared and destined for housing subdivisions or shopping malls seemed to proliferate in the late 80’s and 90’s. I photographed the sites. It was a narrative of loss and time. Glacial erratic boulders captured my attention next, survivors from the last retreat of the ice. They seemed to have their own stories to tell. Trips to Ireland followed in the 2000’s photographing stone circles, rows and monoliths: sites of forgotten ceremony nestled into the landscape. They made me wonder, were there mysteries here at home fostered by man’s past work on the land?

The book Manitou by James Mavor and Byron Dix discusses a rocky New England landscape containing overlooked evidence of Native American stonework, often connected with celestial, solar and lunar calendar functions. I tried to find and document these fragile survivors of the past in a clear and straightforward way, and also situate them in a landscape of change.

Another current body of work centers around John Winthrop Jr., first governor of the Connecticut Colony. Growing up in New London, we were taught the story of our city’s founder. I went to Winthrop Elementary School, built on the site of his family home and now gone in the wake of constructing Rt.95’s southbound bridge. How much has changed since his arrival in 1631, how much of this legacy remains? I hope this might change the experience of time and history, seeing beyond what is there to also imagine, simultaneously, what perhaps, was there.

Other projects have periodically demanded my attention and continue to inspire.