These handmade photo collages are part of an ongoing series begun in 2000, and they combine my lifelong involvement with both silver-based photography and collage, as distinctly separate practices.

The inspiration for this series is the architecture and urban landscapes of Manhattan. What began as a ten-year documentary project about the growth of the west Chelsea arts district, continues still, as I remain captivated by the city’s architectural elements and vistas.

The photographs that I shoot in New York, I later transform in my darkroom and art studio in Maryland. This work helps me to reestablish my connection with New York, as I review and assimilate what I have experienced there. I also use images of nature, store window interiors, and other subjects which evoke strong feelings of a time or place.

In this series, I combine B&W film photography with cut-and-assembled handwork. I create multiple gelatin silver prints of an image, which I hand-cut and -assemble into geometric abstract collages. While at first the works may appear to be digital montages, closer inspection reveals the texture and layering inherent in the handmade pieces.

These patterns could, with less effort, be created digitally. But it is my love for darkroom work, and the hand-cutting and -arranging of visual elements, which drives this process. Since my first foray into this mode in 2000 with simple small-scale compositions, I have expanded my repertoire to include application of glass and crystal elements, complicated layering, using the paper’s natural curves for 3-D effects, and use of inkjet prints. I have also moved from 35mm to 645-film format, to allow for larger, sharper prints.

I was awarded a 2016 Individual Artists and Scholars Grant by the Arts & Humanities Council of Montgomery County, MD, to create the two largest-ever works in this series, On the Way Downtown (One Jackson Square), at 38-1/4” x 83”, and Grapevine Cartouche (Estonian House), which measures 21” x 95”.