In the late 1980’s I spent three years working with Ken Burns on his Civil War film. My job was to make 4×5” transparencies of photos in which Ken wanted to travel with the camera. That meant I worked closely with hundreds of 19^th century photographic images, and saw that what interested Burns was not necessarily the central subject of the photograph. I also became fascinated with the way that the ravages of time altered the connotation of photographic images as their surfaces – especially those of ambrotypes and tintypes – changed and degraded. I began to look on my own for more photos that showed such changes, going to antique stores, flea markets, auctions, and tag sales.

In seeing so many of what were essentially snapshots for different eras, it seems that no matter the decade, photographs that people make fall into a small number of categories: Friends, family, pets, possessions, travels, hobbies. I often find it sad that images which had once been a very personal and intimate part of someone’s life ended up in the public domain, devoid of any context. Despite that removal, so many of these types of vernacular images contain iconic elements – subjects and moments that could belong to any of our lives.

I start with found images (from the world at large as well as those of my own) and alter them to create new ones that honor the commonality of experience the photo represents.