All Here, All Now

Here, now is all we have. We bring all of our past to the present moment and within us is all of the potential for the future. Our subjective experience of time is continuous and uniform, emerging from the past and flowing toward the future. But Einstein proved that time varies relative to the speed of light, slowing down or speeding up depending upon our own trajectory through space. And Buddhists say time is cyclical, always repeating. Some physicists even assert that, given the right conditions, time may flow backwards. As a scientist, I line up with Einstein; spiritually, I feel kinship with Buddhism. Like all of us, I experience the forward flow of time's arrow, rushing me all too fast into my future. But, as a photographer, I don't have to choose sides. For me, the debate is both infinitely interesting and totally beside the point. Whatever we believe the nature of time to be, we have only the present moment in which to experience it. Living in that moment and capturing its essence in an image is reward enough. These images and video are my way of communicating that we have only the present moment. We cannot relive the past and the future will never come. When and if we get there, it will be the present. All here, all now.

The Mind of God

The Mind of God is an installation piece relating abstract mathematical reasoning to abstract photography. Rather than illustrating concepts in higher mathematics, the abstract images in this piece find the common ground between these two seemingly different disciplines. 

It is this: Theoretical mathematicians and abstract photographers each seek to understand the structure of the universe and the meaning of life by distilling it to its essence. They approach these immense and deep questions by different routes but with the sense (and firm belief) that there are answers to be found in the beauty of elegance and simplicity. 

The Mind of God has been selected to be shown as part of an exhibit entitled “Temporality: The Process of Time” at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art in Rockland, Maine. November 2, 2019–February 23, 2020.

"L'Invitation Au Voyage"

“L’Invitation au Voyage” presents my translation of Baudelaire’s most famous love poem in word and image. In order to convey the power, beauty, lyricism and passion of the original, I preferenced meaning over literal translation, seeking the beauty and truth in Baudelaire’s language and finding its equivalent in another. This form of abstraction gets at the truth of the poem by preserving and intensifying it. 

The photographs that accompany my translation are likewise abstract. To find a scene beautiful and compelling and to distill that beauty in a non-representational photograph enhances the impact of the poem, creates a new and vital work of art and giving renewed life to the original. 

"L'Invitation Au Voyage" will be showing at the VOIES OFF Photo Festival in Arles, France in July 2019.

E=mc²

Prior to 1905, all physicists credited Newton’s description of the universe as a clockwork machine in which time flows steadily forward through the unvarying grid of space. Not so with Einstein. When scientific experiments showed Newton’s description to be flawed, Einstein fearlessly thought his (and our) way out of the box. It was not light speed that varied; it was time and space. In fact, light is a constant, the fulcrum around which the universe balances, or, as Einstein put it, E=mc2. 

As ravishing, brilliant, evocative and world-changing as Einstein’s insight clearly was, I can’t help but wonder whether he would have come to it even sooner if he had been a photographer. Photographers know that everything revolves around light. The amount of natural light is not in our control. If there is no light, there can be no photo. But we can play with time; we control the shutter. Light is our constant; it is time that is relative. Mass is energy instantiated and it is the speed of light that determines which form we see. 

Taking Einstein’s special law of relativity as my starting point, I explore its implications in this installation. It’s theme is the moment when mass becomes energy. 

“E= mc2” will be showing at the MIT Museum Lab and Studio and Gallery in Cambridge, MA from September –November 2019.