I have always been suspicious of the "absolute" in society, religion and any other system of power. My questioning of strict categorizations and standards derives from my rejection of anything that obscures meaning in a reality that is naturally ambiguous and multilayered.  I use photography to  reveal the ambiguities and contradictions of America's cultural geography. With my images I can isolate and compress in an attempt to subvert the impulse to constrict and define. 

    I am fascinated by the vernacular landscape of the United States; the view from the sidewalk and street, and the public spaces that offer official representations of history and the environment. My photographs of zoos and historical museums are isolations of the play between artifice and fact that create our notions of historical and natural reality. It is the constructions (signs, props and enclosures) rather than the artifacts and animals that provide the context and meaning for these sites. The viewer sees artifice that is integrated into the factual reality of the objects and spaces it describes; these spaces do not function without the antagonistic relationship of fact and fiction although for the viewer the conception of these divisions is dissolved. America's museums and zoos contribute to the cultural cohesion of the United States by presenting reality as singularly expressed; but they do this no more so than the mundane environment that confronts Americans everyday.

    Divided by property lines and delineated by roads, walls and landscaping; America's geography is as heavily partitioned as its museums and zoos. Just as those sites dictate a particular vision of nature and history so too does the mundane environment express the cultural realities of the United States. While each space is understood in isolation of the adjoining property their meanings are compressed on the visual plane. American's ambiguous and often contradictory relationships to nature and history, as well as to religion, government, and capitalism are expressed along with a multitude of other realities. My photographs exist as visual evidence of  the conceptual geography of the United States.