I love idyllic places and the kind of suspension of history they offer. But noble beauty is not enough. One must complicate the picture, because there's nowhere to "escape" to on the planet in pursuit of a hermetic pastoralism or a redemptive wilderness sublime.

Once one crosses a conceptual threshold of rethinking what nature might or might not be, it can multiply outward radically. The world becomes a more interesting place to be, and one is perhaps somewhat less judgmental.

What better way to actually deal with L.A. than to get above it and engage with the horizontality and scale of the basin itself?

I take pleasure in working with the non-art photographs that reside in public archives, essentially authorless and owned by the world itself, because I find the world of fine art photography to be pretty silly and pretentious.

I am a photographer who likes to make images, but I also want to get a sense and understanding of images that have already been made. I don't fabricate worlds; I pay attention to the things that already surround us.

... anybody who has spent time with cameras and photographs knows that images, like gravestone rubbings, are no more than impressions of the truth.

I come at a subject from a profoundly photographic level. I am not interested in pictures that ultimately don't work as pictures.