Dead & Alive, ART

2025, "The Great Mother"  35mm Nikon, silver halide

As a photographer on Halloween, I join the festivities with my camera. Working within the traditions of amateur photography, I use 127 film in various stocks and AG-1B flash bulbs with my Starlite, Kodak Brownie, and Flash-O-Set cameras. I also carry a 35mm Nikon F loaded with black-and-white or infrared film. I shoot with four cameras on my body at once.

The people I photograph are passing by. I have seconds—sometimes less—to make an image. Someone in the crowd once thought I was dressed as Diane Arbus. I felt honored.

Dead and Alive is anti–F/64 photography. Nothing in this process is precious or precise. The work is by the people, for the people, and of the people. Working with old cameras and unpredictable materials, I treat every frame as a gamble, every image a matter of luck.

After scanning the film, I encounter the person or animal I photographed and begin a relationship with the image. From that encounter, I add a story—my response to the poetic narrative suggested by the costumed subject. Many of the photographs are printed on canvas, allowing me to paint directly onto the image.

The final works exist as translated images rather than fixed photographs. Each piece moves through film, scanning, artificial intelligence, and paint, becoming a post-photographic palimpsest. The image continues to evolve beyond the moment of exposure, shaped by chance, memory, machine interpretation, and hand. In this way, Dead and Alive extends into a living visual interpretation—one that resists finality and remains in motion.