Portfolio
Places for the Spirit: Traditional African American Gardens of the South
One early September afternoon I found myself on the porch of Bea Robinson’s house in Athens, Georgia. While my friend Sara Glickman and Bea chatted about their lives, I looked around and became entranced by Bea’s garden. Something came over me – or through me – as I stood in the garden, looking, feeling, sensing the energy or magic or spirit, call it what you will, that surrounded me. On that warm, soft, sunny day I took the first of what has turned into a series of photographs with which I continue to be deeply involved fifteen years later. Read more» / View»
Beyond Words
I have chosen objects from nature one by one, found them, dug them, preserved them – a squirrel’s skeleton, poplar saplings that sprout from one long root, broken egg shells lying on the forest floor. I have taken them, or been given them, from the land on Prince Edward Island where my grandparents visited each summer, where I now have a cottage. I chose these things because of their extraordinary beauty – and because they seem to hold the mystery of life and death. Read more» / View»
One Family
While traveling in Georgia nearly twenty-five years ago, I stopped at a small mill worker’s house to photograph two children who were playing in the front yard. Soon their mother, Lois, came out and joined in the picture-making; on that day and the next, I photographed them and one older sister who later arrived; and ever since, I have been photographing this family, including Lois, her husband Joel, their seven children, and their grandchildren and great-grandchildren. As I returned almost every year, bringing pictures and making more, the Tooles came to accept me as part of their lives, and I came to know much of the family history. Read more» / View»