In my photographic career, I have been primarily a photographer of place. For the past twelve years, I have searched for the essence of the North Coast, defined by a series of photographs depicting what I consider quintessential to its nature. Mostly, I avoid celebrated landmarks like the Megler Bridge, the Astor Column, and the Flavel House, in favor of that which we pass by daily without fanfare. I hope that by creating images of subjects that visually set the region apart, I will also uncover, allegorically, who we are.

The photographs in No Place Like Home clearly show that we live in a watery place. As with most bodies of water, we can see the surface but can't easily see the depths. Despite our comfortable homes and happy times here, those depths, in my opinion, hold an undercurrent of moodiness, if not downright melancholy. Is the feeling caused by the preponderance of cloudy and damp days, or is it the emotional residue from the desecration of the indigenous Chinook Tribe, already drastically depleted in number from white man's diseases by the time Lewis and Clark arrived? Could the moody atmosphere be attributed to the echoing cries of all the men lost at sea at the mouth of the Columbia and the lonely wailing of their wives and loved ones left ashore?  

The frequency of ships, docks, and river pilings in the photographs further suggests the emotional undercurrents in our surroundings. While waiting on a dock to begin a fishing trip on the river can be a time of joyful anticipation, docks are also where we bid farewell to those going to sea or where we may wait anxiously for their return. They also symbolize the starting point of our final journey out to sea, our inevitable passing into the eternal so gently presaged by the poet Alfred Lord Tennyson in "Crossing the Bar".

Fortunately, the Pacific Ocean can lift our spirits when we need it. On the one hand, it renders our lives like that of so many ants, skittering about busily for a short time and then gone, while it goes on and on. But paradoxically, while the Pacific's grandeur and timelessness seem to underscore the brevity and relative insignificance of our lives, it can also give us hope and faith in something transcendent, experienced as the rapture that can be ours while walking its shores. I hope that some of my photographs can do the same in some limited sense.