I have always envisioned the core of the body as somehow illuminated --- a self-contained lightning storm. Swirling clouds of charged ions pass through membranes and fleshy nets. The internal light of electrical fire flashes in milliseconds like the discreet pulses of stars conducted through oceans of saline and covering vast atomic distances. Similar to the simple repetition of four amino acid sequences or cells within systems and tissues, my images areoften structured around an arrangement of simple elements that serve as a code that I use to understand by metaphor and comparison, the workings of science and the culture, poetry and beauty that are reflected in the cells, structures and chemical memories of the body.

My research for these images began with my employment as a medical photographer over seventeen years ago, and is rooted in the history and visual conventions of medical and scientific imaging. I began to explore the photogram process exclusively seven years ago because of its similarity both visually and in process to X-ray images and because it is one of the oldest procedures in photography with which to present a very simple, historically fundamental way to visually speak of complex ideas. I have come to view the photogram process as a medium in itself within the larger medium of photography.

The concept of scale and the creation of intersections between microcosm and macrocosm reside at the heart of this work. My photograms began as very large murals designed to create an internal, seemingly microscopic space that enveloped the viewer on a physical level. As I began to draw relationships between the microscopically small and the astronomically large, I began to think of subatomic phenomena as the nexus linking the two. The images shrank in scale to draw the viewer into a smaller world with references to a larger universe. As the scale reversed, the ground for the images also reversed from black to white, from shadow to light.

Because the images often do not look like traditional photograms, a process description might be helpful. I build three-dimensional sculptures out of translucent and transparent materials in my studio. I bring the sculptures into the darkroom and arrange them on a sheet of photographic paper under a safelight. I expose the sculptures and paper to white light from a 10-watt bulb, fiber-optic lights, and electroluminescent wire and then I process the paper in photographic chemistry in the usual way. The image that one sees on the paper is a record of the shadows cast by the objects, their individual transparencies and material characteristics. Like an X-ray or a scanning electron micrograph, more information about the physical subject is revealed in a photogram than can often be seen with the naked eye.

I view my work as a long-term project in continual evolution. The black, reversed photograms speak of the communities, entities and locations inside the microcosm of the body. The positive, or white photograms use highly selective exposure to delve deeper into the imagined molecular and subatomic spaces of the body and to extend further beyond it, into the universe. This is a living body of work in a dynamic process of growth and change.