what am i hunting for?

“Deep in the heart of Summer, sweet is life to me still,

But my heart is a lonely hunter that hunts on a lonely hill.”

I've spent a lot of time hunting for and making pictures in New Orleans and Portland this summer. Soon I will be in Uganda doing more of the same.

It's what I love doing more than almost anything else in my life. 

Jane Aspinwall, Associate Curator of Photography at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, used the above quote from a late 19th century poem titled "The Lonely Hunter" by Fiona MacLeod (which was the pen name for William Sharp) to introduce a short essay about my work a couple years ago. Little did Jane know that the book by Carson McCullers The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (written in 1940) and the subsequent movie starring Alan Arkin had a meaningful impact on me when I was a teenager.

I reread the book this summer (Cartier-Bresson did the cover photo - a portrait of McCullers herself!).

With my camera in tow, I am a lonely hunter of sorts. It's kind of become my mantra this summer.

I am making new work for an exhibition to be held this December at the Leedy-Voulkos Art Center in Kansas City. I've decided to call the show "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter."

So often, the hunt ends right back where I started, or more precisely, in my own backyard. After walking the city streets for most of the afternoon, I came upon this fair haired beauty wrapped up in a towel right next to my Portland home.