"It is as a photographer that I have navigated my way through the world. Introduced to the work of Robert Frank and Diane Arbus in 1973 while a graduate student in political science, I dropped out of the political science program and devoted myself exclusively to photography with no thoughts as to how I might make it work. I eventually found my way to the San Francisco Art Institute and a few years later was further influenced by meeting Robert Heineken and seeing his work. By 1978 I was in the graduate photography program at the University of New Mexico, earning an M.A and an M.F.A. Since then, I have often chosen atypical professional paths. Over the years I have worked in commercial printing, been an art director for an upscale clothier, a graphic designer, an art educator, and a contract manager for a nonprofit. I share a mud and straw bale house with my wife Nan, in a remote and rocky canyon 4 mile up from the Snake River Plain in South Central Idaho. Regardless of materials or process, my photographic work has been, alternately, personal documents but which draw upon traditional photography genres, or highly narrative, combining personal history with cultural memory while challenging traditional assumptions about form."