Book of Blue

I sometimes describe Book of Blue as a front operation for a science fiction novel. It's a cute joke but that is how my life often feels. Blue is a book wherein fictional concepts morph into reality and reality takes on its own unusual kind of fiction.

Blue Studio is about more than the photographs; it's about the people who come through, our mutual growth process and the network forming around the world. Many of us know one another through another worldwide network and organization, Planet Waves.

My studio in upstate New York is in a forgotten city called Kingston. I began the current phase of my photographic work in Paris in 2005, then moved onto Brussels and came home to the Hudson Valley about a year ahead of the 2008 presidential election. I've been working in my studio for a little more than a year, Easter to Easter.

What you might call the springtime spirit infuses my work: I enjoy looking at women with young eyes, and I use photography and interview as a way into understanding the inner nuances of their perception. My subjects get to see themselves: many of my photos are created in mirrors, which is about the underlying foundation of my photography and the associated writing -- cultivating self awareness.

I come from news journalism and my work often has a documentary feeling. I've been getting into abstract photography for a couple of years, also involving mirrors. In this way I've brought silver and etching back into the photographic process, though my work is often digital all the way through the process.

The articles sometimes read like my diary, sometimes like news, sometimes like human potential missives from the 70s and sometimes like transgressive fiction. In Book of Blue as contrasted with other projects, I take the liberty to blur the line between 'the story' and 'story'. Some of my photos are developed into fiction and nonfiction accounts of existence and change.