When I made 'Near Catskill Creek [October 15, 2004]', which depicts a car graveyard in the Catskill woods, I wasn’t aware Thomas Cole had painted Catskill Creek nearby many times. This coincidence inspired the series 'I, Kaaterskill', weaving a dialogue between the light, color, and sense of place of an American wilderness idealized by mid-19th century painters and the degraded environment we live in today. When I showed this work in the Hudson Valley, I paired it with reproductions of the Hudson River School paintings, many made in the same vicinity.

This inquiry into the forces that animate a place is a through-line in much of my work. I’m inspired not only by the historic and cultural influences that vibrate in a setting, but how we gather up these bits of data to form an idea of a landscape—or as Merleau-Ponty writes of Cezanne, to depict “an object in the act of appearing, organizing itself before our eyes.” These words articulate my desire to capture the immersive act of beholding: through manipulations of light and space in my photographs, I seek to slow down the moment of observing so we can see deeply into the meaning of a landscape and contemplate where we are.