About

It’s summer, I’m 15, camping with my uncle and aunt on the coast of the Adriatic in Puglia, Italy. My parents had given me a Vivitar point-and-shoot camera for the vacation. And to their dismay, I shot two rolls of the waves crashing into barnacle-encrusted cliffs.

The force of the tides wash over millennials, crushing, wearing down and penetrating the ancient rock face … and all the while the tiny barnacles attached as they are to the past thrive on the ever-present force.

That was the start, to explore, to learn, to document, to teach and to challenge. Old-new, light-shadow, good-bad, warm-cold. My love of the camera, the film, the darkroom, the chemistry, photography – and the photograph as a storyteller.

It’s been 16 years since my last photography exhibition, and you may be wondering why that gap? Simply put, the trials and tribulations of life and the “artistic struggle” came between me and my art.  In 2002, I moved to Asia and, in 2004, came back home to Canada – in love and with a baby on the way. That December 16, my first daughter and a new purpose, that of being a father and a provider, were born. I fell back on my economics degree, started working in finance, and after the birth of my second daughter, I became the principal stay-at-home parent. Often, I thought about leaving photography, but always something out of the corner of my eye made me pull over, to seek, to explore my passion.

In 2017, I was replaced by an algorithm, bought out along with 80% of my colleagues. Obsolete and forgotten, I turned to driving to provide for my family.

Little did I know that a spark would be rekindled in me. As I drove the GTA, all around I saw forgotten flat farm fields filled with simple pastel colours and repeated lines – all too soon to be replaced by repeated suburbs. These perceptions compelled me to shoot hundreds of fields as if I were training for a marathon! Over the next year, each working day, 8 hours a day, driving and talking to myself about enlightenment, I started to expand, grow and develop my thoughts about transitions, and those points where past meets future, what becomes obsolete and what is replaced, overwritten by version 2.0, and I thought about the relationship today's version of society has with those objects, places and beings from the near past.

Still, today, something out of the corner of my eye catches my attention and makes me pull over, to seek it out, to explore it, to learn and hope to understand, not just the present point in time, but the transition of past to future and the relationship today's society has with these objects, places and beings.