Born and raised in southwestern Ontario and having lived in central Michigan, Montreal Quebec, and Cambridge England I ended up settling down in Calgary in 2003. My primary work is as an architect, and in 2013 I founded Systemic Architecture Inc., a small firm that specializes in commercial and industrial work. Through the years I’ve found photography to be an interesting creative outlet that complements the practice of architecture, with ideas often being shuttled back and forth between the two. On top of that, I have a masters degree in criminology, which brings concepts such as detachment and adverse social conditions in as a topic of interest.
I have always been into the work of more architecturally influenced photographers such as Andreas Gursky, Andreas Feininger and Werner Mantz. One of the things that studying their work teaches the viewer is that everyday urban forms can be made overtly recognizable or almost completely abstracted at the discretion of the photographer. The field of architecture at times stumbles all over itself to assign meaning to built form and urban conditions, but this desire contrasts the reality that many of the great urban photographers of the 20th Century revel in the anonymity of those same conditions. My work tends to run more with the latter than the former: there is something inherently open-ended about photographing cities and buildings, usually drifting to themes of social cohesion and identity. Whether intended at the time of exposure or not I feel that my images often convey a strong sense of transience. Compositionally my work tends to be anchored in framing and geometry, but this again goes back to deference to inanimate objects for which human meaning may not easily be determined, or may be quite different to various observers. It is precisely that open-endedness that I think makes this type of work interesting.
Growing up in Ontario and Michigan during a prolonged period of economic decline, I have always been fascinated in the processes of decay within the city as they were evident throughout my youth. Many of my images from locations around the globe express temporal shift, whether positive or negative. The extreme state of decay of cities such as Detroit Michigan have developed an unusual phenomenon in which excessive photography of ruined buildings has been termed “ruin pornography” and has come to be seen as gratuitous and detrimental to the social fabric and morale in affected areas. While this type of photography may be detrimental, we do not think twice about capturing images of long-gone societies of antiquity in tourist trap destinations. One of the things that I find interesting about photographing urban conditions, whether of current or past societies, of functional settings or those experiencing decay, is this: rather than simply gawking at the structures or ruins themselves, a good photograph should impart some feeling or suggestion as to the aspirations and goals of the people that designed and built them. If the viewer is invited to contemplate such things, then the work can be considered a success.
On a technical level, my photography has minimal post-processing or digital editing. I prefer found conditions and avoid staging. The more unusual effects I am able to achieve are solely within the shutter, such as zoom and focus dragging.