Artist statement
Through choices of subject matter, use of direct flash or difficult, available light. and other technical considerations, I make photographs that are thematically connected to the urban world where I work, and maintain their roots in older, graphic traditions. There is a documentary thread running through what I do but I’m as attracted to the power and mystery of portraiture as I am to any social issues my photographs may raise. I work in many difficult locations such as cantinas, immigrant shelters and impoverished neighborhoods, but all my work is tied together by a single factor: the need to get beyond the artificial surface of things, be it in a photographic world dominated by sanitized, color digital images, or in our cities, seemingly built to conceal certain populations from public view.
