Unassuming photography.
A meaningful connection.
At the dusk of a life spent chasing what matters -and what doesn’t- I’ve come to see that simplicity is the key.
In the flood of irrelevance (“content”), it’s the quiet, simple things that matter most to me.
So I drop the act. No more goals. No more expectations. No more hope. No more outcomes. Clap. Scene. I let it come to me. I take what’s there, offered to me. Enjoying life as it is, however it is.
In my photography -my eternal lifeline-, I’ve tried everything. Every subject, every format. I’ve searched for an angle the whole time: What’s the story? What’s the best light? What’s the unseen? What’s the incredible? What’s the rarest?... There’s always more. Certainly for someone who knows no limits.
Of course, I embraced digital with enthusiasm too. It unlocked potential beyond what I could have imagined. But as the world accelerates towards an all-digital way of being -with all its consequences-, I felt something fading away. I didn’t want to lose who I was. A human being, with human needs for creativity and connection, that is.
So I quit. I let go of digital photography. And with it, I let go of my work on nature and wildlife.
This isn’t a rupture. Just another page turned in that book of life.
Now, I want to write this last chapter with my hands. And light. I want to make photographs -real ones. I want to reconnect with people, with the world and with myself. In a meaningful way.
The images on this segment of the site are all part of that and if you’re reading this, it means something reached you. Thank you for your curiosity.
This site once existed to showcase my nature and wildlife work (you can still read about that here). When I quit, I nearly shut it all down. But didn’t. Instead, I kept this space and now I’m turning it into something new: a place to share my new work and how I connect.
Phōs. Graphé.
“Did you fuck with the picture?”
I’ve heard some version of that more times than I can count. This one in particular was thrown at me at the edge of the world, in a bar on my way to Antarctica. I had shown just one image to someone out of a casual conversation about a place I’d once been. And there it was again: the question.
Ever since I picked up digital photography, people have asked if I photoshopped my images. The answer varied. Some days you’d get a quip. Other days, a twenty-minute ramble into why, no, I don’t “fuck with” my pictures.
I learned photography in a school. A real one. Before YouTube. Back when we shot on strips of celluloid soaked in chemistry and waited days to see what we’d caught. Phōs. Graphé. Writing with light. That’s what we were taught. That’s what I practiced. For decades. So no, I didn’t need Photoshop. I knew how to take a picture.
There’s no arrogance in that. Just craft. Just care. My aim has always been to render what I saw as close as possible to how I saw it. Creativity doesn’t need artefacts. It can live in light, in timing, in composition, in silence.
And still, the question kept coming. And it kept bothering me.
Until I asked myself: Why do people ask?
And I realized -maybe they’re not really asking about Photoshop. Maybe they’re looking for something that feels real in a world that increasingly doesn’t. Maybe they’re asking: Can I still believe in what I see? Is there still something true out there?
I think they miss something. I know I do.
That’s why I left digital photography behind. I went back to film. Sold all the high-tech gear. Bought the same two cameras I once carried as a reporter, some thirty odd years ago, full mechanical, full manual. Built a darkroom in my basement. And started thinking about a project that would tie everything together -my need for connection, my longing to see the world again and my desire to return to the slowness of making something with my hands.
That’s what this portfolio is. These first images are part of a long journey, across America.
Not Americans. Not American politics. Not American symbols or American wildlife. Not even the great American landscapes…though some or all of that may appear.
This is just my America. The one that offers itself to me as I go. A road. A stranger. A detail. A sliver of light.
I don’t hunt for images anymore. I gather them.
This is unassuming photography.
And I hope, somehow, it speaks to you.
If you ever find yourself in Belgium, come by. See the prints. Sit for a while. Talk, if you feel like it. There’s beer.
