I am interested in presenting contemporary social issues, I want my photographs to talk about today, especially those issues that are ignored. My commitment is to tell stories that are worthy of being told. I like to call myself an illustrator with a camera and I seek novel and provocative ways to construct my images so that there is a connection to the viewer, who may respond with new awareness or sometimes irritation or offense. My process involves engagement with real people, who have names, lives lived in society…stories. I carefully and respectfully engage with my subjects, and explore with them the themes and questions I bring to the situation. This involves a great deal of conversation, reflection on meanings and connections and then deep consideration of the construction of images to express faithfully the outcome of this collaboration. Sometimes my work is challenged around the issue of posed photographs, particularly suggesting that such images are less powerful than spontaneous ones. My photographs emerge from a conversation between my subjects’ lives, my engagement with this, creative inspiration from cinema and photography and then the development of unique images that do not replicate existing photographs or recreate images dictated by Asian or Western sensibilities.

Perhaps the idea of “butoh” best captures my process. In a recent Japanese project, Master Kazuo Ohno insisted there is a lack of sense in his dance… sometimes in looking for meaning we can get lost. In a similar way I want my photography to be a dance with my subjects, I want to merge with my subjects and convey the depth of their human experience, while acknowledging humbly, the immensity of the task involved in imaging the lived experience of another. At the moment of public presentation, I find myself exhilarated and overwhelmed by the deep connections my images suggest. Sometimes it seems I try to write a whole play in one night or try to collect the sea in a bucket. In this moment I think of my subjects and their stories, I find comfort and confidence in those I have come to know as my photography dances with them.