I believe that making a record – not of celebrities or grand places alone, but also of everyday life – will have more lasting import to the generations of people who take and use my work in the years to come. I think slowly disappearing marshes, dilapidating wooden barns slowly replaced by metal silos, neighbourhood diners and humble country churches, simple shops and markets are important, and they are my motif. ‘Disappearing America’, I call it. I don’t resent progress and innovation, but I also value tradition, simplicity and human interaction and go out of my way to capture them as a touchstone of what will one day be ‘old times’.
I photograph what I find as a time stamp of our ages. Maybe, in its own way, that’s a New Age way of doing it. To stop for a moment, focus on what’s real and carefully record it and, most important of all, save and preserve it for others to see what in these times are long gone. I am all about leaving our story for the ages, for others – friends, foes, who knows, even aliens – to study and share generations from now.