At the age of nineteen, I abandoned my future career as a French Horn player and started making images. Capturing moments on film, processing the film, and making prints became an obsession for me. Like many beginning photographers, I thought that good photographs were produced by traveling to places far from home and by observing unfamiliar people and cultures. I made my fair share of images based on this philosophy. Photographing Mardi Gras Parades, abandoned buildings, and neighborhoods in which I had never lived, afforded me success in making images but didn’t encourage formulation of the visual language I needed to portray the world in pictures. Education changed my way of communicating visually.


In 1996, my eight-year-old daughter, Corey, and I moved from our home in Pensacola, FL to Santa Fe, NM so I could finish my undergraduate work at the College of Santa Fe. Encouraged by my teachers, David Scheinbaum and Steve Fitch, I learned that photographing from a personal point of view made my images speak what I wanted to say about the world. Photographing Corey led my attempts at honing my newly discovered visual language. I continued photographing Corey and her friends as they grew into their teenage years. This work became difficult to continue because of the sensitive line between being a documentarian and a mother. It’s difficult to create a healthy balance between those two roles, so I chose to concentrate on being “mom.”


I have continued photographing what is personal to me. My parents’ leaving my childhood home and retiring to New Mexico; my six-year-old son, Jackson; and my former homeland in the South have provided ample subject matter for me to explore visually. I continue to be obsessed with capturing moments on film . . . yes, film . . . and learning from those moments.