through digitally reformed photography of the art and architecture of various historical periods and cultures, I comment upon the social, political, psychological and economic foibles of today’s world and my personal place and experience within it.

Ditched

We are intimate with our couches, we associate them with rest and healing.   These are their last moments, unclouded by coffee tables or living room sets the couches stand alone and show their unique style and personality. Each one has its own story, with only hours left to tell the tale before the city trucks come and turn them into matchsticks, tick tock.

Years ago I saw a couch in dolores park and took a photo with my phone. As I thought about the couch in the middle of the park and the people that carried it there I started reflecting on what stories that couch could tell. Soon after I began to notice the other, previously invisible, couches strewn about the city.  As a backdrop San Francisco fills in the blanks of each story and offers its own flavor.

     My thoughts have always existed in the place where the two worlds of light and dark collide.  I'm constantly struck by the sheer beauty of life, while simultaneously being aware of the fragility and darker side of it, always maintaining a balance.  Being highly perceptive since childhood, discovering photography in my early 20's provided me with a cathartic  outlet where all my emotions, and ideas could merge as one.   I have a deep interest in wildlife and the patterns existing in nature, as well as those that continually reveal themselves in my own life.  I'm additionally interested in concepts such as intuition, perception and time.  One of the positive aspects of sharing my photography is that it creates a dialogue and  meaningful connection to people, thereby increasing my inspiration.  I view myself and photography as part of the continuous life chain where we all contribute to, learn from and influence each another.  After graduating from the Department of Fine Art at SFSU in the 90's, I shot slide film for many years, but I've made the transition to digital photography in the last 6.  

Whereas I am always engaged with more complex bodies of work that often take months, if not years, to come to formal fruition, these pictures, these squares, they are always constant, and they are right here and right now.

The origin of this group of pictures can be traced back a number of years ago to an image I made of myself in my underwear with a large coffee filter on my head, holes cut out for eyes. This image was the start of many playful performative portrait sessions for me. Over time, what was once a practice of using exclusively my image in these pictures has now expanded in scope to include various friends and people I meet in the course of my journeys.

This work has become a collaborative practice of “making” pictures with others, versus the less collaborative “taking” pictures of others. I think of the pictures as part of a collection that I can always add pieces to, and get excited in the moment when I’m working on a completely different and unrelated project and I realize I’ve made one of these squares, something to add to the constantly evolving collection of performative portraits.

The portraits themselves happen quickly, and are often unrehearsed, a result of inviting friends over for breakfast or dinner, or from meeting someone who seems to be equally interested in my beard as they are my unusual camera and photographic techniques. An explanation of my practice usually includes me asking, “Will you make a picture with me?” Most people usually agree.

Although possibly lacking a period at the end of the sentence they create, these images should be viewed as no less intentional than anything else I create. They are quite possibly more intentional and hold more promise because they don’t have a permanent home in a more formal body of work. They are nomadic and wandering, but always contain the same motivations and goals. 

Through photography, video, and installation I explore anxieties and psychological patterns that manifest in my physical environment and my personal history.  My work demonstrates how internalized memories and external social feedback loops influence my experience of the world.  I replicate and expand upon unproductive cognitive processes, and impose narratives onto everyday objects to transform them into something unexpected.

I was inspired to photograph Crustaceans after finding containers of crabs, shells and bugs in my parents garage where they had been hidden and placed in jars for the last 53 years. I photographed the Crustaceans and made beautiful prints but I needed to take things a step further. Working with my hands has always been a love of mine - particularly working with beautiful woods, since I was sixteen years old and I apprenticed a master cabinetmaker. Recently, I've combined this love of creating beautiful objects with my career as a professional commercial photographer, in creating Photographic Cubes. Each cube is hand made and these measure 2ft x 2ft and house four archival photographic prints covering four of the six surfaces of each cube. The two remainder side show the ornate wood of the cube. Hence, the cubes can be viewed from any angle with varying effect. The cubes are self contained units and can be displayed in any number of ways including stacking them upon one another. They can be made in any size and configuration. I wanted the cubes to become their own entities and combining the sculptural with the photographic without taking away from the photography but adding to it and making it something new and alive.

My work is varied through media and theme. I have been working on my latest series, The Count and Other Tales of Love, Loss, and Revenge, for the last year and I have discovered the assemblage medium as a means of expression for this body of work.

Being able to use a variety of mediums for the work has been the natural progression for me as an artist and I feel satisfied being able to incorporate a variety of thoughts and feelings into one piece.

Previously, I have worked in photography, drawing, and digital illustration. My current work marries all of the ways that I like to express myself into one element.

Jeff Snell's paintings unite traditional landscapes and popular culture as vigorous abstract rhythms. Working with brush and spray, Snell uses expressive gestures that incorporate a variety of forms found in nature and elements of urban flair. The organic qualities of his subjects exist in a fantastic world, where the natural position and order of the landscape is challenged in an unruly microcosm. His paintings radiate an energy and excitement that engage the viewer and offer a glimpse of nature's inner sanctum.

In this current series, I'm investigating environments from the imagination, thinking of these as glimpses of atmospheric forces mingling with eachother. Each canvas is a window into a bit of ordered chaos where nature is continually changing and the viewer is center stage to a swirling cosmos.

Relationships are a primary aspect of life: parents, friends, enemies, lovers and so on. Evolving conflicts with our parents are the first we must attempt to resolve. Through family, we begin to learn about security/insecurity, dependence/self-reliance and the ability or struggle to love. In practical terms a resolution is never found; we harbor a delicate balance between reverence and disrespect and the patterns we create impact the rest of our lives. Exploring these patterns is a key focus in my life and art. 

Photography has significance for me on several levels. Most importantly, my father was a photographer and I grew up surrounded by his images. These are my one tangible link to the man who died to early for me to really know. A photograph’s honesty is tenuous at best, its realism pretends to tell a truth and we often feel very comfortable believing what a photograph shows us. 

With Papa Obscura I am pushing the boundaries of photographic manipulation. Using my father’s vintage negatives I have printed gelatin silver prints - reinterpreting his images to fabricate a new truth. Chronicle of Exile is a series of 4x5 still life images. Using props and photographs to create a collage, these images stand as a counter point to the work of my father. The objects and images within each photograph are metaphors for the complexities of the parent-child relationships and are often left undefined. These are very personal images that come from an intuitive process and as such they ultimately become self-portraits of the artist.