“I grew up in the suburban forest of southeast Michigan, photographing my way through life first with a circa 1989 Kodak Instamatic Camera...[at Grand Valley as a photography major] I was surprised but enthralled at how deep this all could be: beyond the 1-hour print machine at the drugstore, beyond being a window to the world. I discovered that photographs can be a visual representation of anything imagined or real, object or idea.”

Artist Statement for 2007.586.1

It's been said everything that has ever happened to us is stored in our brains for our entire lives. Conversations, experiences, and appearances are all neatly tucked somewhere into the folds of our memory. We recall them often, rarely, or possibly never again. To separate memories of actual experience from those of stories heard or of photographs seen can be difficult. How much is simply what we have been told? What has been reinvented and rewritten in the process of remembering? Memory is malleable and subject to disintegration. We are frequently unsure. My photographs can act as visual tabs in the filing cabinet of our minds, providing access to personal memories. For each narrative suggested by the photographs in this series, there are related memories I can trace back to having actually happened-- I think.