The Dreamer

Coming of Age

Life, environment and our experiences all of these things influence and mold us into the individuals that we become, ebbing away at the innocence that we begin with. I started this project thinking that I would discover all of the things that take away from our purity. What I realized was that nothing is ever "taken" but rather "gained." Through experience we gain knowledge; this is the definition of "living." We live to experience and we experience to live.                 

And Then, There Was Color...

                                                           (Crystal Cave Rd., Kutztown, PA; an autumn drive)

My last term at Kutztown I finally discovered color photo. Prior to that all of my work was black and white portraiture and documentary in nature, so this was a great departure from what I had been doing. Once again revisiting this idea of time and its effects on things. This time looking at objects rather than human beings. It is interesting how time can completely transform not only the appearance of an object, but its usage and purpose as well. How the functionality of an object gives it its purpose and definition. I love this idea of recycling things that have become "retired junk" so to speak into something beautiful, new & revered...art.

La Rosa Di Maggio

This is a photo of my grandmother Angela LaRosa. She is now 85 years old and dementia has begun to deteriorate her brain. Despite the fact, she still enjoys a playful day with her great grandchildren playing peek-a-boo with them outside on a sunny california day. This is how I will remember my grand-mother, jovial and full of life.

Intangibles

All living things are born into existence, bloom and progress toward entropy, essentially their own dematerialization. The difficult part is that despite the withering of the physical body, the spirit remains unwavered. At age eighty I will still view the world with the same reverence that I did when it was still new and exciting. To appreciate the miracle in the mere fact that any and all of this universe exists in all of its perfect complexities is the key to youth and wholeness.

Ancient Advesaries

 

(A pleasant ride through the inland empire & her mountainsides, on the hunt for John Wayne)

Time. I struggle with the concept...so cunning it dredges by so slowly as to appear static, when in actuality it and everything in its grasp are fluid and ever changing. Here today, gone tomorrow. An ephemiral wisp of reality that grazes us briefly and then is lost...So this is where most of my work stems, from this need to understand time. However brief, a photo is a rendering of a specific moment, occurance and individuals in time.

If a moment is here than not, what is reality? When we remember the past it's as if it were a dream, an imagined thought similar to the thoughts we may create in our minds of the future and what it may hold. Where is the line between reality and thought drawn? It could then be said that the only reality that exists is this very moment, nothing before or beyond.

By comparing and contrasting different stages of life, one is able to see not only the physical progression that has occured, but also the psychological and behavioral as well. What I find most interesting are the parts that remain intact. Although time weathers, as well as seasons us all in many ways, there is a part of who we inherently are that remains unchanged. This is who we WERE, ARE and WILL always be.