Spectacles and Retrospectives

I process the world in which I live in words and images. I have forever been fascinated with the confining and liberating aspect of language. A way in which I over come this is by photographing my world. I photograph what I see, what I live and where I go. Because My life is what it is

I am an avid reader of Consumer Reports. For three main reasons: 1.) I enjoy reading how human beings quantify and classify human-made products. Typically the products reviewed within the pages of this publication are items of luxury, the focus of the (perceived) American Dream. Televisions, stereos, Mp3 players, vacuums cleaners, refrigerators - these are the things that are dissected in Consumer Reports. These are the things that belong. 2.) I feel that as a person with monetary power (a power that only a minority of the world possesses) I have a responsibility to myself and to the larger global society to be informed when I make a purchase, especially a large one. 3.) My Aunt Jody read Consumer Reports religiously. As well as Reader's Digest (I read that, too. I have since I was about 9 years old). She was one of the most fascinating characters I have ever encountered. Reading what she read makes sense. Having qulified that this is a publication that I enjoy and...

• I am among the generation of kids that got the standardized talks in elementary school to educate us to ‘stranger danger’ in order to make us aware of the potential of kidnapping. I remember faces on milk cartons. • When I was in kindergarten, we became involved in the Gulf War. I was very young, but raised in a house where current events were openly discussed. I knew war was bad and that people violently died. And I knew that not all the people that died in war were the bad guys.   • When I was in the fourth grade (and living in Oklahoma) the Murrah Federal Building was bombed and 168 lives were taken. • When I was in the sixth grade, there was a bombing at the Atlanta Olympics. What should have been a celebration of national pride became fear-driven-chaos and embarrassment.  •  In the eighth grade, there was a premeditated mass shooting at Columbine High School. People my age were killing each other. • On picture day my junior year of high school, I stood in l...