for Brickbottom Open Studios, Nov 20-21

This is a selection of photographs from my recent travels. Most of the color photographs were taken near coastal New England towns, and the black & white photographs are snapshots from a summer I spent in Europe.

Up until the last week—indeed until the very last moment—this show has been about cropping. Photography in general is about cropping, in two ways: first, take the whole world and crop it down, zoom in, and press the button when some sort of essence emerges in the frame. Then, when it comes time for exhibition (or the family slideshow), crop your thousands of photos down to the final handful that makes sense of it all. I’ve been doing the first kind of cropping since I started photographing in college. But the second kind of cropping is somewhat new to me. It’s given me a chance to look back at what I’ve been shooting and see that my photographs vary wildly in subject matter, style, and feel. And while I could have chosen my favorites and put them up on the wall—confusing everyone but myself—what I really wanted was a theme; I wanted to find a set of photos that fit well together, were consistent, and maybe even had the same subject matter. And while I can’t say that I’ve “made sense of it all” exactly, what you see here is my best effort so far.

(on the left are paintings by Karl Cronin, on the right are my photos)