A World through My Lens

This is the digital version of a solo exhibit in the Eppley Art Gallery of Morningside University, which was on display from 1 November 2021 through 19 November 2021.

My origin story as a photographer begins with a farm kid from a very small town in North Dakota moving to London after finishing a PhD in mathematics in Atlanta. Growing up on a farm meant that vacations were planned around fieldwork; we were lucky to get a three-day trip to Montana or the Black Hills each summer. Our only long-distance family trip was to visit an uncle in Houston. The world was opening up to me. Multiple countries were within a short flight from my new home. Although I spoke the same language as the inhabitants of my new home, it also was a source of many adventures of discovery.

I quickly fell in love with travel: new sights, new sounds, new smells, new tastes. I progressed from taking snapshots of the places I visited to thinking deeply about how I could capture the sights of these locations. How could I create a memory to hang on my wall so that even when home, I could remember the joy of exploring a new place? From there, I expanded the question. How could I create a work of art that made others want to go to where I had been, stand there, and enjoy a scene? What defines travel photography for me is a sense of place that can inspire the viewer to seek out new destinations and experiences. Sometimes, my subject s location appears as text in the image, as in Sioux City Sioux Firewords . Other times, I leave things more mysterious so the viewer wonders where the scene was captured and wants to explore for themselves.

As a travel photographer who has mostly worked in urban settings in Asia and Europe, the last 18 months have been challenging. I have taken the opportunity to explore Siouxland more, and I have made a couple of domestic trips that have kept my love of travel and illustrating great destinations alive. For me as a travel photographer to capture images here at home, it took some time to form a different perspective. Yes, I live here, but there are billions of people who do not live here. How can I place myself in the shoes of someone who has never been here? How can I create images of nearby places that will inspire even those who live here to pause and wonder?

Eventually, the world will open up again so that we can travel. I hope these images of some of my views of the people, the natural wonders, and the built environment of our planet will inspire viewers to get out and explore both near and far.