I am interested in how the camera serves as a prism that brings to light and enlivens history's bare discourse. A long-standing interest in the photographic social document and in ephemeral remnants of American culture underlies my work.

Over the past ten years, I've worked on a series of photographs taken in state capitols titled: Statesmen - Pictures from the Fifty State Capitols, where I photographed and re-interpreted the portraits of former governors from each of the fifty states. With this project, I created a personal Hall of Governors, a collection of salesmen, matinee idols and fools, as well as respected ordinary men. Their faces unaltered, yet transformed, are infused with sadness, silliness, pompousness, and lost power.

My interest in the portraits exists on various levels: in the moment of the original portrait’s making - the peak of a surprisingly ephemeral term of influence; in the visual character of the countenances displayed; in the near anonymity of the once-powerful; in their potential as "sitters" once again, in my reinterpreted images.

As works of art, the original paintings and photographs adequately depict those that once governed our individual states, the men (and still only a few women) who held a peculiar place of power over millions of American citizens. As governors, these people exercised their will and influence, lived in elegant mansions, and achieved political recognition second only to the nation’s political elite. When their terms expired, however, most of these once esteemed governors fell quickly from the public eye, returning to their previous lives as farmers and businessmen, with some leaving office in disgrace. It is this flux of influence that interests me, and how the sense of precarious position occupied by these statesmen is often revealed in the portraits made at the peak of their power.

Many governors continued their careers of public service and later won seats in Congress, or even succeeded in becoming President, while others left office in disgrace, such as Thomas Overton Moore (Confederate governor of Louisiana, 1861-1864) who was exiled to Mexico when he lost his office in the Civil War. In more recent times, we find former governors selling corn chips on television and lobbying for special interest groups in Washington. A recent exception to this is, of course, former Texas governor and current U.S. president, George W. Bush; increasingly, the post of governor is used as a stepping stone to higher office.

My prior work is tied to the documentary tradition in photography, and informed by my graduate studies in American Civilization. After several years, this approach came to fruition in 1995-1996 as I traveled the U.S. by car, creating a brief, visual record of American history and culture via photographs taken in junk stores, local history museums, and on the street. The Statesmen project evolved from this.

The Statesmen photographs do not strictly document the governors’ portraits in their architectural context, framed and hanging on the rotunda wall. My challenge is to transcend my nominal subject, make new images from the existing pictures, and restore power back to these mute visages. Using a hand-held 35mm camera and available light, I seek core essences of each image by working with scale, distortion, color, fragmentation, and repetition. I allow the form to change and detach from the object itself, and explore a broader, richer range of content and interpretation of the (usually) banal portraits that are my starting point.

The final images are straight prints of the negatives I make on site; while a few images are combined into multiples, the individual frames are not digitally altered (although some may appear to be). Working within the limitations imposed by circumstance, I twist what is visible through the viewfinder, making mythical images created in-camera, and rooted in reality.