WHO?
I’m a visual author living in Kyoto, Japan. I was raised in Los Angeles absorbed with Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone, Technicolor movies, Marvel comics, Choose-Your-Own adventure books, screwball comedies, baseball, Hollywood theatrical productions, and pop music. Aspired to write novels and short fiction in my 20s and 30s. I have a longstanding love of literature and cinema. For many years I traveled widely. Nowadays, I’m a father. All of these tangents make me who I am and affects the sort of photographs I make.
WHAT?
Since childhood I’ve been intrigued with storytelling. My main influences from photography tend towards the widescreen cinema. I’m interested in making photo books that contain narrative structure. Sometimes the narrative can be subtle, surreal, or fantastic, and sometimes a photo book might be biographical or memoir, with words and pictures coming together to compose a story. It’s important for me that every photo book is a unique experience, pictorially and emotionally.
Just as important is the craftsmanship that goes into each project. I shoot in color and make all my prints in the darkroom. A single photograph can take hours or days or weeks, and I’ll keep coming back to it until I find the right atmosphere. Later I love the process of collaborating with a designer, experimenting with storytelling devices when the books’ forms are developed.
Then comes the challenge of assembling a story from different photographs. Sometimes, the story is obvious, other times it isn’t. Often times, it’s a vibe, a feeling, accessing the subliminal– and other times I’m reconstructing a person’s life, sometimes my own, usually someone I love.
WHEN?
Late bloomer here: I didn’t own a camera in my teens or most of twenties. Started taking photos when I started traveling. I didn’t find a “signature” and begin hand-printing in earnest until my middle and late thirties. I’m entirely self-taught, though my influences are considerable, and from genres and disciplines beyond photography.
WHERE?
I live in Kyoto and thus many of my images are from here. There are many from my travels too. But I’m keen on establishing scenes that are neither here nor there, moments that are out of time and place. The darkroom is something like an alchemy chamber. It’s there that my work as a photographer really begins.
WHY? Because when I’m making photographs into stories it feels marvelous to be alive.
