I was fortunate, when I was growing up, to have seen a great many beautiful places. I was not a photographer then, and the memories have dulled over time; I no longer truly remember what things looked like, but I remember how they felt.
When I think back to my childhood it is the wonder and terror of the world that I remember. Everything seemed infinitely vast and beyond understanding. The world was filled with currents that I couldn’t quite grasp and symbols that I could not decipher. I could feel the weight of things but not their shape.
I’ve always been attracted to images that seem to carry that shadow reality just beyond the surface: the weight of unknown things and the awareness of forces in motion that are older and stronger and unconcerned with where I might happen to be standing.
For me the landscape offers up mysteries like messages from another country. I feel as if I’m mapping fragments of some larger place that surface unexpectedly in the everyday. In the photographs I can peer across a great divide at a world that is busy thinking its own thoughts and doing unknown things. This is a world before words, where the unknown is just on the other side and the light is always on the edge of fading. It recalls the mingled wonder, expectation and uneasiness of my childhood where secrets could appear at any moment, although their meaning might never be explained.
