I am from a small town in southern Virginia.  A rural, company town… furniture and textiles.  A dying town today, but when I grew up a prosperous one, at least by some standards.  It’s hard finding an identity when you grow up in a small town.  No matter how you feel about yourself, there is always a “way” to live up to, “livin’ up to your bringing” as the folks of the area might say.  It wasn’t all that bad, but at the same time… it was.  There are so few freedoms when you grow up with so many eyes on you.  I always struggled with this, and eventually, I needed total freedom.  I left, and I taught myself to see.  I have been teaching myself to see ever since.  Photography is no different.  I am mostly self-taught.  I have watched and felt images all my life.  I am of the “TV baby” generation, and though I played in the creeks and the woods as a child, I am visually influenced by the confluence of architecture, art, cinema, design and music that I surrounded myself with as an adult.  Some days I miss that small town, the simplicity, and I still struggle with where I belong.  My work is about that search.  That search for identity.  That search for place.  That search for me.