Assembly Required

ASSEMBLY REQUIRED: This project contains my earliest work and where my career began. I came to do this work through my mother. Being the family artist, she introduced me to 20th Century art, notably Cubism, Russian Constructivism, Dada, and the Bauhaus Design School.

The portfolio is arranged in chronological order to get an idea of how the work evolved over five years. The first ten images are still-life constructions that use a process that involves a large light table, multiple view cameras, a simple but complicated masking system, and an airbrush. From sketch to realization, each image could take up to two weeks of work to complete, and many of the compositions involved prop fabrications and captured collage elements. Mind you, this was all before Photoshop, working with unruly and unforgiving large format film cameras.

After about five years, I began to see the beginning of the end of this technique and started experimenting with other methods like photomontage to aid my compositions. The last three images represent my transition from still-life into photo-illustration, the genre I am most known for. Here is a description of each image:

Image #1, Talk to Me, was for Spindle Top Records and an album cover for saxophone artist Sam Riney. The concept was to construct a two-sided, cubistic face using communication elements- braille, tin cans and string, megaphone, etc. That assignment led to the next image created for the Lincoln Center and was literally and figuratively the "face" of the performance season that year. Image #3, titled Retro-Progression, was pro-bono assignment for the San Francisco AIDS Foundation. My photo was one of many artists' who donated their time for the cause. The following image was for Mac World Magazine and opened an article rating the accounting software from the early nineties. Image #4, Recycled Paper, was for another annual report for Crosspoint Paper. Images #6 & #7 were for a capabilities brochure for Wieland Furniture Company. Each image required using up to seven view cameras that helped combine multiple photos on one sheet of film, using a complicated masking system in front of the camera. Image #8, Prospectus, was created for an annual report, illustrating an optimistic future soon after the recession of the early 1990s.

A&M Records hired me to create the following image for their Grammy ad in that year's program. Image #10 was a commission for an industry publication, Photo Design Magazine, and opened an article on artists and agents. Wiring the Wood was for Premier Magazine and an article about the coming digital revolution in film making. The following image, Best Mutual Funds, was a commission for a financial magazine and incorporated practical collage, prop fabrication, and assemblage in combination.

The World According to Baedeker was a three image series for Travel and Leisure Magazine. The art director wanted me to use my early technique. Still, seeing as this was a 19th Century travel writer we were featuring, I proposed using Victorian Age etchings as a visual influence. To create the effect, I used the time-tested photomontage technique in the darkroom. Multiple negatives were brought together on one sheet of photographic paper using a complicated masking system in front of the enlarger. The prints were then selenium-toned and hand colored using photo dyes.