Every portrait is a combination of the subject, the photographer, and the moment the shutter clicks—what I call the “accidental now.” No matter how carefully one poses a portrait—or poses for one—the “now” of the picture is, ultimately, uncontrollable. In this way, every portrait becomes a spontaneous document of personality, a testament to the complex masks, which are our faces.

This project began as a conversation between friends, in this case Linda Hankin and myself. It was February 2003, snow still on the ground, and we were happily ensconced in Linda’s window-walled studio, where she was painting my portrait. Of course, we talked. And one of the things we talked about was portraits, the act of portrait making, both from the sitter’s and the artist’s point of view.

This led to my thinking about how while some artists exist in the public eye, visible as recognizable faces, most are seen only through their art, their physical selves unknown to their audiences. I thought of the female artists in Niagara whose work I had heard of but whose faces remained a mystery, and decided it would be a worthwhile and intriguing activity to photograph them—to make them “visible.” Consequently, the portraits presented in this show are part documentary, part tribute. The sixteen women involved are all part of Niagara’s growing cultural community, to whose remarkable vitality they have all contributed.

Artist's Statement for School of the Arts Exhibit, 2006 (Lewiston, NY)

Although five of the images (“Water Apple,” “Sunset Apple,” “Bottle Reflection,” “Snow Code 2,” and “Barn Window”) included in this show were created with a 35mm Nikon, I am now using mainly a digital Canon. Because it is so easy to manipulate images digitally, I do not manipulate them. Every photograph I present is exactly the one that was originally taken.  I might crop and/or enlarge an image, but that is all.

For me, photography is a form of metaphor, a visual extension of my poetry. My primary concerns are content and composition. In our age of advanced technology, anyone can point a camera and shoot. It’s the eye behind the camera that makes the difference. One of my favourite quotes is by French cinematographer Robert Bresson: “Make visible what, without you, perhaps might never have been seen.”

Many of the pieces in this particular show involve nature in some form. I tend to do one of two things when photographing the natural world: I either look for an unusual image or I zoom in on a small part of one that might not be considered unusual at all—unless one looks closely at it.

What I am most interested in doing is “painting” with the camera. By this I mean that I aim to create a “painterly” feel in my photographs through the use of light, colour, composition, and subject matter. The result is sometimes abstract (as in the flower studies) and sometimes surreal (as in the Waterton Lakes pieces). Sometimes the result is a “still life” (“Water Apple”).