Profile

I was born in 1959. Oklahoma, Cherokee, father: football player, mother: "Maid of Cotton." Grandmother: painter. She brought me up, painting. I grew up in Texas, an urban environment, , Richardson, Dallas. I went to the University of Texas in Austin for 3 years: Botany and Art. Madrid, Spain in 1982 –painter, and began doing more photography than painting in 1989. I lived, in Madrid – 10 years. Moved to California with a friend, in 1993. Living, working, downstairs of my family's house, since 1996.

Many people take belief systems at face value and follow them without question. I was brought up a Baptist and watching old Tarzan movies. My favorite belief system is that a white, khakied explorer/photographer can go into darkest Africa and steal souls by taking pictures. Such a rare camera now exists, here in my living room. I kind of reverse the process by summoning the stolen spirit that resides in an existing photograph, before I use the camera.

First, I go into a trance that calls and unites me with the subject, in a found photo.

Sometimes the stolen soul I encounter is a mountain, tree or river. Once the spirit of the photo becomes involved in my mind, I talk to it or write to it. In the end I unite on the page with the others' soul by leaving my vital fluid on the surface of the spirit's imprint. I seal the posession of my own soul by taking deep close ups of the site of interaction – within the spirit's chamber – the photograph.

Website: http://www.cyclorama.org

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