For me, the landscape is the perfect photographic subject - it allows for great artistic variability and, if done well, also allows for great artistic control. When a viewer takes in a landscape as opposed to a photograph of a human face or human situation, there is a tendency to draw much less from subjective experience to interpret the work. In that way, the landscape photograph really speaks for itself - in a voice that the photographer has chosen for it.

There is something rather sad in this though - the fact that there is little subjective reference for the individual to draw on when viewing a landscape. I find this sadness to be inherent in landscape imagery, and that is perhaps what is also the greatest draw for me.

The American experience and relationship with landscapes is, historically, a sad and unfortunate one. There is a degree of otherness and objectification that we assign to nature that began with the discovery and conquering of the great frontier, and it carries on today with the continuing industrialization of our environment.

Philosophically though, there is great precedent for the idea of humankind as being part of nature and that nature, in turn, as part of humankind. Following from that basic philosophical idea, what we have in nature and in the landscape is the alienation and objectification of a part of ourselves. The landscape then becomes a sad, solitary and somewhat inaccessible part of ourselves to which we find ourselves always drawn.

My goal through my photographs is to directly express this sadness and loneliness while tapping into each of our longings for that missing piece of ourselves - a missing piece really self-imposed.