About

Ambient Shadow

Artist’s Biography

One of my most treasured possessions is a photograph of my two sisters and I standing on a white sand beach with the Apollo 11 moon rocket in the background, sitting on the launch pad.

A few weeks before my dad took this picture, he had let me decide whether we would leave on our Florida vacation in June or wait until July so that we could be there to see the launch.

My impatience overwhelmed my sense of adventure, so now I have a nice picture of my family and a static moon rocket sitting on the launch pad, but no pictures of the historic blastoff.

Nine Years Later

I stepped onto an Icelandair DC-8 at JFK International Airport and took off for a year abroad in West Germany. Buried in my trunk, stuffed with bell-bottom jeans and polyester shirts, was my parents’ Minolta SR-T 201. When I stepped off the train in Regensburg and made my way to the dormitory, I discovered a darkroom in the basement.

A camera, a darkroom, and a year spent in a historied place still recovering from an old war, and divided by a new one, all conspired to encourage the creation of a photographer.

Two Years After

I returned home to Nashville, I got a call from some friends I had met in Regensburg. They invited me on another adventure, which turned into a chance to tell a compelling story with my camera.

I met my friends in Kansas City, where we built a raft in a public park from assorted lumber, a telephone pole and twenty-four 55-gallon oil drums. We launched the “Eulenspiegel” two weeks later, and the raft and a crew of eight floated 1,500 miles down the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers to New Orleans.

When I Got Home

I worked for two years at a photojournalist’s custom black and white photo lab. He encouraged me to include more “human interest” in my photographs and told me about an upcoming Klan rally scheduled for downtown.

“Take your camera and a long lens down there and let’s see what you come back with.” I took his advice and came away with the most haunting images I have ever captured.

In 1983

I left Image Custom Lab for law school, where they train you to look at everything from as many points of view as you can imagine.

The experiences I have collected, and the perspectives and patience I have developed, flow through my work, refined by new technologies and by time.