time and tides

Time and Tides is a photographic collage series that explores water as both subject and metaphor — a space where time, motion, light, and memory continuously converge. Developed over twenty-five years of experimenting with layered photographic narratives, this body of work represents the clearest articulation of my ongoing investigation into how experience unfolds across shifting moments and perspectives.

Traditional, single-image photography cannot fully express the way I perceived the world as fluid, cumulative, and in constant motion. Instead, I began photographing my subjects through many detail-oriented fragments — subtle shifts in light, texture, color, and movement that on their own might pass unnoticed. Through the collage process, these individual moments captured over time and from varied viewpoints are reassembled into compositions that are both disjointed and cohesive. Only in bringing these details together does the larger image emerge, revealing unique rhythms and relationships.

Each collage is constructed physically, layering the detailed photographs over, behind, and alongside one another. This assemblage adds a subtle three-dimensional presence, allowing light and shadow to activate the surface and enhance spatial perception.

In this series, oceans, rivers, canals, and shorelines become dynamic environments shaped by tides, weather, light, and human presence — sometimes visible in gathered figures, sometimes only suggested through traces such as footprints in the sand. Shifting skies and atmospheric changes appear throughout the series, contributing motion and spatial complexity without becoming the subject themselves. Whether along the familiar waters of the Hudson Valley or across distant coastlines and historic waterways, each collage reflects how these elemental forces continually reshape both landscape and perception.

Together, these layered fragments form visual narratives that invite viewers to move slowly through each composition, discovering the many embedded details that build toward the whole — revealing stories, both quiet and jarring, of time and transformation.