What Remains…
As the opening of Ghosts in the Glass draws closer, friends have been asking me what first drew me to Mare Island.
Over time I’ve realized the answer isn’t really about Mare Island at all.
I’ve always been drawn to places where the past still feels present. That might be an abandoned shipyard, a forgotten town, or a forest recovering from wildfire. Before I ever make a photograph, I spend time learning the history of a place. I walk it, return to it in different light, and simply observe.
Eventually, the facts begin to give way to something less tangible—a feeling that the place still carries the lives and events that shaped it.
Photography became my way of expressing that feeling.
The windows at Mare Island offered a perfect metaphor. Looking through weathered glass, reflections of today’s sky mingle with the structures beyond. The present and the past seem to occupy the same space, never quite separating. That quiet conversation between memory and what is before us became the heart of Ghosts in the Glass.
The photograph below, Echoes Through Glass, was one of the earliest images I made for the project. Looking at it now, I can see the ideas that would eventually define the series, even though I didn’t fully understand them at the time. It isn’t really about a building. It’s about trying to express the lingering presence of a place whose story can still be felt long after its original purpose has passed.
As I’ve been preparing the exhibition for Viewpoint, seeing all twenty finished prints together has helped me understand the project in a new way. They aren’t simply photographs of old windows or historic buildings. Together, they’re connected by the same quiet question that has guided much of my work:
What remains after time has done its work?
I hope that when visitors walk through the exhibition, they won’t simply see old windows or historic buildings. I hope they’ll experience something of what I felt while making these photographs—that sense that the past is never entirely gone, but continues to linger in unexpected ways.