The body of work I offer for your consideration to be presented at the 2024 Review Santa Fe is entitled Vintage Silver: A View Through My Cameraless Lens.

I created this work using vintage glass plate negatives, and after extensive experimentation, I realized that I could work with these plates to create images.

As a photographer, I have always been fascinated with different equipment possibilities, working with a range of equipment from 35mm to 8 x 10, as well as pinhole cameras. As a landscape photographer, I realized I could build lenses that play on early years when attempts to form an image on a glass or metal plate were first conceived.

My journey went hand in hand with learning about all the image-making possibilities – cyanotypes, platinum, gravure, and silver gelatin prints – and I began to realize these materials' exciting abstract image-making opportunities.

In my early years, I was driven by my awareness that the work required me to fully engage all of the basic design elements I have always valued. Form and function. Rhythm and repetition. Structure and space. Quality of line and texture. These principles continue to inspire me on the path of image- making.

By applying my curiosity about materials with the desire to create these abstract images, I hope the photographs inspire viewers to engage with them and question where abstraction can live within an art form known to be representational of the world around us.