I’ve written before about my first photographic outings back in 2006/7 in California.

I’d made photographs in the field before and after acquiring the studio I had in Los Angeles in the early 2000s where I spent a great deal of time experimenting with lighting and various film types, trying to understand film and its characteristics, but not many. There are a handful of 35mm color slide rolls in my archives beginning in 2002 but they don’t mean much — typical beginner rolls with the new camera I’d gotten, exposed primarily to see how it would all turn out. Nonetheless, having that first 35mm camera was exciting, even if only as a tourist of sorts.

One of the film types I was frequently using in the studio was 8x10 Polaroid — I was making a lot of portraits and using it to experiment with various types of lighting and so forth. Black-and-white and color.

Such incredible film.

One day I found myself wondering what it would be like to expose the big Polaroid films out in the field, with natural lighting and in natural settings.

And so I bought myself a hand-crank processor for the films and hit the road with my old Century Universal 8x10 field camera — 2006. (The big Polaroid films require a separate processor to make the image, and the one I had in my studio was an electric model.)

It was on that first outing in rural California and seeing the big beautiful Polaroids come to life out in the real world that I discovered where I belonged. And it wasn’t in the studio.

I’d been on the road a lot in the 80s/90s as a skateboarder, but roaming with a camera allows for a new, more focused perspective; noticing the landscape differently, trying to figure out what it all means.

I’d make one more California road trip with the big Polaroid films the following year before making conventional films my primary medium. I’d also sell all of my studio lighting.

And in 2008, I roamed California once more, but now with 35mm black-and-white films. And from there I began exploring the Southwest and Texas, Colorado, etc.

Just prior to that I’d also discovered the dr5 photo lab, which was then in Denver, now in Iowa. Dave Wood, proprietor, processes negative black-and-white films as positives, or slides.

I was blown away by the results. And so from then on, all of my black-and-white films have been processed by Dave.

While also using color conventional films on my outings over the years, I have far more black-and-white slides than color photographs. Just something about black-and-white.

And so from my collection of thousands of these black-and-white slides exposed between 2008 and 2020, I’d pull a few earlier this year and collaborate with publisher Stanley/Barker on the making of my first black-and-white book, In The Gold Dust Rush.

It’s hard to put into words what the black-and-white photos mean to me, and the experiences of making them, but they hold a special place for me. This American landscape that I remain as fascinated by today as I was on those formative outings over a decade ago somehow feels especially quiet, its scenes more isolated, in black-and-white.

With more black-and-white publications to come, I’m thrilled with this first offering, and to be publishing with Gregory and Rachel of S/B, who make beautiful books.

Preorder a copy HERE.

This book has been a long time in the making, and so thank you for the support.

Black-and-White/The New Book