I photograph subjects that refuse to disappear. My work begins in places most people drive past: the salt-crusted edges of the Salton Sea and the improvised architecture of Slab City in Southern California, the weathered faces of artisans in Hội An, the rain-slicked streets and alleys of Shinjuku in Tokyo.I am driven by the aesthetic philosophy of wabi-sabi, a worldview centered on the acceptance of transience, imperfection, and simplicity. A crease is a record, not a flaw. Rust is time honestly spent. I look for the beauty that only survival produces, the kind that can't be manufactured, only earned.To me, meaning is not handed down by monuments or captions. It gets made by the people who stay: the woman laughing in the doorway, the driftwood heart that says Be Brave, the old man still weaving a mat in the twilight of ancient traditions. If the works of the mighty are going to crumble to sand anyway, the only reasonable response is tenderness toward whatever is still standing.
