Created using source material from the Thomas Bouckley Collection, these cyanotype photomontages bring together historical photographs of Oshawa to create new narratives and offer different perspectives. They combine and unify different people, objects, and moments together; new combinations of images create new ways of seeing, and our mind invariably looks for connections. These collages create fantastical scenes where fact and fiction merge. There is dialectical tension between real history versus my own interpretation. These prints walk the line between two worlds, honouring historical authenticity whilst enhancing narrative potential through cut-and-paste manipulation.

I tend to photograph subjects in a series to explore larger connections and universal truths, but sometimes a single image stands on its own.

Some of these photographs are single image and others are selections from a series.

This series uses found images from National Geographic and LIFE magazines. My cut-and-paste collages explore ironic and contradictory ideas about 1950s and 1960s culture, playing with stereotypes such as the cold war and military machine, leisure time and travel, exploration and expedition, and modern-day consumerism.

Seen out of a moving car window, they may appear as nothing more than a roadside quirk or blurry still life arrangement. Upon closer inspection, we discover details that tell a story and move us from the impersonal to personal. Roadside memorials are more than tombstones, more than a random collection of objects. They point to a particular event, place, and tragedy--an individual whose life ended suddenly. These unique memorials mourn and honour the deceased.

Captured during the summers of 2005 and 2006 in Ontario, individual prints are 12” X 9” using pigment inkjet on matte paper.

Have you ever noticed one shoe by the roadside? Where did it come from? How did someone lose one shoe? Where did the other one go? Abandoned. Mysterious. Solitary.

To contemplate this phenomenon I deal out like playing cards a series of medium format film contact prints from 2004 - 2005.

Music clip from M83.

This 2004 series of photographs is a reaction to the architecture of a school building in which I worked. Like most modernist schools of the 1960s, it’s a utilitarian structure with sprawling layers of squares, rectangles, and cubes. At first glance, it may appear as though there’s nothing to photograph that is attractive. I wanted to reveal new details, visual relationships, and a new perspective—beauty in concrete and stubborn blocks.

All images are 9” X 12” selenium toned silver prints.