The Past Reimagined: Tracing Echoes

I often create personal photo narratives that amplify my angst for moments in our historic past and my need to shed light through reflection and acknowledgement.

I take storytelling to a new level as I build a reawakened story layering vintage (circa late 19th Century to early 1920s) photographs over current images of abandoned homes, grounds and structures that I have taken. I keep true to the original subjects in each historic photograph by layering old over new, changing only the backgrounds, thus keeping the poses as found, which I believe is essential to their historic integrity. I painstakingly search to find and use early photos that I feel have an authentic relationship to each abandoned setting and, in many, I use photographs from my own historic family archive.

In other photographs, I combine images from the past with the present, using models layered over historic photographs found in the public domain like those of the English photographer, Eadweard Muybridge.

My goal is that each image becomes a kind of totem built from layers of history reincarnated anew. I do not intend to offer more ubiquitous images of time travel, but to relay my personal goal of challenging the pull forward or back in order to withstand the test of the present. This can be especially difficult to do when using images from one’s own family, speaking from experience, but it is my quest.

These newly created images harken back to their historic counterparts and symbolize more than just the passage of time. They trace the echoes of those that have come before us.

*A selection of these black and white photographs are available in Limited Edition Digital and Silver Gelatin Prints. Some can be printed as large as 60 inches wide and are perfect for both residential and commercial settings.