When my career turned to photography 15 years ago, I began by photographing the figure only as an exercise.  I was intimidated by the great painters and early master photographers who came before me, and found it hard not to measure my art against theirs.  Steglitz, Steichen, Brandt and later Edward Weston all submitted to the allure of photographing the figure.  But it was the potent images of the figure by the painter Francis Bacon that spoke to my subconscious with a timeless and haunting vision.  He challenged me to respond from within, to face the darkness.  I had to find a way to express both the symbolic darkness and the inherent purity and grace of the naked body. Nothing about the body is sacred anymore.   What is left is the mystery of how people interpret the figure for themselves and what symbols they attach in their most  primitive soul searching.   Our culture has created a media world filled with naked people.  There is no need to imagine anything anymore.   For both the artist and the viewer it comes down to a private affair ...a quiet meeting in the dark.

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