Cabinet of Curiosities

My Cabinet of Curiosities series borrows most heavily from the old illuminated books on nature from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries.  Those scientific tomes were illustrated mostly with engravings and lithographs of drawings--usually taken , not directly from nature observation, but from mounted specimens or even from the written accounts of naturalists.  What these illustrations may have lacked in scientific accuracy they more than made up for in artistic expression.  In later years, with the introduction of photography and it's widespread use to document, the illustrated nature book was finally able to reveal living creatures, often photographed in their natural surroundings.  While these 20th century natural history books were much more scientifically accurate there is a certain romantic charm that I admire in the earlier illustrations that is lacking in the photographic representations.

With this series I have attempted to recapture and distill the essence of those old natural history illustrations, but through the photographic medium.  I bring to this series my own artistic interpretation through the use of lighting, the effects of lenses, composition, and in some instances the limited use of color.

In homage to my favorite photography movement, pictorialism, I have chosen to photograph this series exclusively with vintage soft-focus lenses that were hand-ground and custom made by the Pinkham & Smith Company of Boston, Massachusetts for such notable customers as Alfred Stieglitz, F. Holland Day, Alvin Langdon Coburn, Gertrude Kasebier and George Seeley.

I plan to pursue this series for a number of years so that I can include a great many animal species that are extinct, rare, forgotten, or mostly unfamiliar in addition to the better known wildlife.  Many of the species I have chosen to photograph are, for personal reasons, somehow related to my own life experience--giving the series an autobiographical aspect as well.

Pictorial Zoology

As a continuation of the Natural History series that I began in 2003, this new group of thirty-six photographs picks up where my last portfolio, Cabinet of Curiosities, left off.  While Cabinet of Curiosities was most heavily dominated by bird and mollusk imagery, this group of photographs draws upon more representation from the mammal kingdom.

While my initial goal with this series as a sort of hybrid homage to early natural history illustration and pictorialist photography has remained, I decided to loosen up my self-imposed rules and criteria for the images and introduce a more creative, and more photographic, approach to my subject matter.  Greater emphasis has now been placed on capturing the mood or attitude of the individual creatures rather than how to best represent them in their entirety.  The result of my interpretation of nature may be less scientific this time--but hopefully, more artistic as the series continues to grow and evolve.