Rising Photographers / V

It began with a name I didn’t recognize, scribbled in a book that once belonged to my grandfather. That small discovery unraveled the hidden history of my grandmother, a history I was never meant to know. Her absence profoundly shaped my father’s life and ultimately led to his suicide, setting events into motion that still reverberate today.

The Weight of Light is a body of work born from the intimate experience of aging and sadness for the world’s diminishing values — its ethical erosion, loss of compassion, and broadening division. These shifts in perception, including a progressive blurring of vision, resonate deeply. Navigating these realities has reshaped my world, often muting its vibrant hues. This drew my focus back to the foundational language of monochrome, my grainy darkroom work from the early 1980s, and the tonalities of historical processes like gum, platinum, and photogravure that have long inspired me.

I grew up in the 1950s in St. Anthony: a small, farming community in southeastern Idaho. The Snake River runs through the center of the town and the Teton Mountains are visible on a clear day. While having only 2,500 residents, it was the county seat and had a post office, a court house with jail and a small library, and an armory where sawdust was thrown down for Saturday night dances featuring country and western bands. Every possible inch of arable land surrounding the town was used for planting potatoes.

Much is lost in the act of remembering. By exploring personal photographic archives, I reclaim the sense of wonder and curiosity experienced in my youth, while idling along the shores of our family lake home or discovering new terrain. In this series, I have re-photographed vintage Kodachrome slides, inviting refracted light, environmental intrusions, and focal plane manipulations to transform the images.

On Christmas Day 2023 my beloved son Cash died. This collaboration came out of the need to honor the relationship between Cash and I. To show how even after he left the physical world we are still connected and in relationship.

This body of work reflects on mortality, the human condition, and our culture’s obsession with materialism. Through imagery inspired by Dutch and Spanish paintings, it expresses the transience of our existence by exploring our shared relationship with food.

Walking through the narrow alleys of Seoul, you can easily find vintage clothing stores and used appliance stores. These stores have been around since the 1970s and 1980s, before the K-pop idols and -food that many people know today became famous. On weekends, the flea market is crowded with people looking for cool clothes. The alleys in front of Dongmyo alley are getting attention again, and tourists also visit here to travel to Seoul and experience the interesting alleys of Seoul.

“Los Ojos - Life on the Streets of East Los Angeles” is a photographic project rooted in the lived experiences of many Hispanic individuals from East LA. Every subject portrayed had been involved with gangs and, at some point, most had been incarcerated.

The project aims to construct a series that invites you on a visual journey inspired by the unique universe of painter Edward Hopper, where light and composition sculpt the solitude and silence of everyday scenes, alternatively the atmosphere of Wim Wenders films like “Perfect Days”. Hopper, with his evocative compositions, masterfully captured the isolation of the human soul amidst a modernizing America in transformation.