This series was started about a week after my stepfather died in the summer of 2004. What began as a personal look back at my own troubled past turned into a larger exploration of places that drum up a similar emotional resonance. I have long viewed the bulk of my photographic practice as self-portraiture – reflections of myself filtered through a sense of shared history with locations and the people that inhabit them. My photos are often described as capturing a feeling of isolation, and while that is there, I am also interested in exploring a contemplative form of solitude or most especially public solitude of the kind one would feel when walking down a street alone or that feeling you get while sitting on a street curb contemplating a crack in the sidewalk as the world passes by. Sometimes those moments are sad and express a withdrawal from the social world but they are also tender moments of aloneness that we all experience at one time or another.
Because I started this particular project while revisiting my childhood geography, time and place is very important to me. I try to create imagery that is difficult to date, capturing something that isn’t “right now” but isn’t any specific time that has ever been or ever will be.