I was born in 1958 in Augsburg, Germany, the oldest of four. My mother was from Berlin; my father was born in Russia but grew up in Poland. When I was young, the family moved to the United States and eventually settled in the new town of Columbia, MD. I’ve made the nearby city of Baltimore my home for over forty years now. After finishing college, I quickly moved towards the photograph as my preferred form of artistic expression. Much of my early work was inspired by my experiences travelling abroad. As time passed, I observed my adopted hometown of Baltimore more closely and with a different set of eyes. I began exploring the idea of home and the passing of time – in particular, the rapid disappearance of so many homes – both in the city and outside of it. The demolition of many of these buildings, for various reasons, has been sanctioned by local governments and other entities often under the threat of eminent domain. Others were simply left behind for nature to decide.
In 2010, I began my photo essay, Last House Standing, as a way to document and explore this condition of displacement. Around the same time, I also began to photograph abandoned houses on the eastern shore, an area encompassing large parts of Delaware and Maryland bounded by the Atlantic Ocean and the Chesapeake Bay. This was one of the first parts of America to be settled by the English colonists in the early 16th century and the region abounds with historic houses. Many of these have given way to new resort developments as retirees from Baltimore and Washington, DC have moved in to seek refuge in an area known for its slow pace of life. Again, I wanted to document the disappearance of these buildings as the 21st century settlers take over.
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My photographic essays “Last House Standing” and “The Camps” have received press both nationally and abroad (Washington Post, The Paris Review, Huffington Post, Slate, Wired). More recently, I have begun to explore the myriad structures of the urban core in Towers, Street, Stairwells and Museums. My photographs have been shown at a number of national and international galleries and venues including the Baltimore Museum of Art; the Delaware Art Museum; the Patricia Conde Galeria in Mexico City; and the Houston Center for Photography. My work is also in several important collections including the Baltimore Museum of Art, New Britain Museum of Art and Le Musée de la Photographie in Charleroi, Belgium. I am currently represented by C. Grimaldis Gallery in Baltimore, MD and PDNB Gallery in Dallas, TX.
For this image I used a Nexus 6P smartphone.
