Collections

Where Literal World shows us an abstract representation of the world as we rarely see it, Collections present more traditional views.

As with Literal World, most of the Collections are a series with images shot from a single location.

Milwaukee Road
West Washington Avenue, Madison WI

A small consist of old passenger cars turned into offices and stores next to an active freight line in Madison provides a wealth of shapes and textures in a palette that's instantly recognizable to any midwestern railfan.

White Barn At Sunset
Madison, WI

This is my first "Golden Hour" shoot. It was great watching the barn change colors right before my eyes. Even though all the shots are head on to capture that great barn board texture, I still needed to finish the shoot off with a postcard shot at the end.

The Future Is Plastic
Middleton, Wisconsin, 2003

One year, just before Christmas, I agreed to photograph the people with whom I worked in Middleton, WI. I had never shot portraits before, though I art directed many similar types of shoots. We had fun doing it.

During a lull in the action, waiting for the next group to come in, I noticed a stack of paper plates and plastic forks, probably the remnants of a lunch someone had set up in the set room sometime in the past. I never expected to keep this study and it is still one of my favorite series.

Sign of the Crossing
Somewhere in Madison, WI

Crossbucks on a sidestreet can conjure up strange visions and long forgotten memories.

It's a hot, quiet summer afternoon and there isn't a train in sight.

Maybe the freight's just late.

The In-Between Collection
Illinois Railway Museum, Mid-Continent Railway Museum

This collection presented itself as I rounded the end of a series of parallel tracks at the Illinois Railway Museum. Though the cars themselves, mostly older, wooden combines and passenger cars, were really interesting studies, what was really unique was the space between the cars. Since the cars rested on adjacent rails, portions of the cars that sat on the next rail were visible in-between the cars in the foreground. In some cases, you could even see through a window or between those cars, revealing what lie on the third set of adjacent tracks.

Reducing the depth of field, the shapes and textures began to create interesting planes of color and forms with this series of images the result.

Wabash Avenue
Chicago, Il

North and South Wabash Avenues in downtown Chicago are a portal into the past. They help make Chicago feel like a city, sound like a city and smell like a city, a real city not some homogonized, pasteurized version of a liberal's fantasy, but an authentic American, black & white, toddlin' town.

Mid-Continent Railroad Museum, 2005
North Freedom, WI

I visited this smaller museum in North Freedom, WI in 2005 and 2006. Although the second visit yielded more images, the first is notable for Dodge On The Tracks 01, the most popular and what turned out to be the focal point of the images I showed in the Intuitive Abstraction exhibit held at the Overture Center For The Arts last summer.