I began my journey with photography at the age of twelve after encountering a book about a photojournalist documenting an archaeological dig in the Middle East. While reading the part of the book where the main character was developing her photos in her desert dark room, I knew I was going to be a photographer and go on an archeological dig in the Middle East. I picked up a camera that year, and photography has remained my primary way of engaging with the world for almost forty years. My early relationship with photography was shaped by material limits. As a teenager, I spent all my babysitting money on film and processing, discovering what worked through trial and error. I learned to wait, to anticipate, and to accept uncertainty as part of the process. Taking on something as technical as photography, at such a young age armed with a vintage Korean Camera with no manual and no access to the internet, made learning challenging but I refused to give up.
 At seventeen, I traveled outside the United States for the first time, spending a summer on an archaeological dig in Jordan. The experience was formative, not only for its geography but this is where I learned to love photographing people and culture. And as I took people’s photographs and looked into their eyes, I came to the deep understanding that we all want to live our lives in happiness and raise our children in peace. This world view has shaped the way I’ve seen the world and what I’ve focused my lens on. Much of my landscape photographic work is rooted in questions of scale and presence. I am repeatedly drawn to expansive landscapes in which people or animals appear small within the frame. These images are not intended to romanticize wilderness or dramatize absence. Instead, they explore the tension between immensity and vulnerability, asking how living beings exist within spaces that are vast, indifferent, and free of human interference. By situating animals as minor elements within large environments, I aim to resist anthropocentric readings and instead emphasize coexistence, fragility, and continuity. The landscapes I photograph are not treated as singular moments but as sites of return. I often revisit the same locations over time, allowing familiarity to replace novelty. Through repetition, the landscape becomes less about visual impact and more about subtle shifts—changes in light, weather, and animal behavior that resist dramatic framing. The resulting images are intentionally quiet and unresolved, inviting prolonged looking rather than immediate consumption. One of these places is Yellowstone where my camera is continually drawn. In parallel with landscape and abstract work, I maintain an ongoing practice of cultural portraiture. My most recent series focuses on women portraying Catrinas in Tennessee, documenting how Mexican Day of the Dead traditions are embodied and adapted far from their geographic origins. This work is shaped by collaboration and trying to preserve something very special in a world determined to make us all the same. The portraits emphasize continuity, dignity, and individual presence while acknowledging the collective significance of cultural expression carried across distance and displacement. Working within cultural contexts requires sensitivity, openness to new ideas and attentiveness. I approach portraiture with an awareness of my position as observer, allowing the subjects’ agency to shape the photographic encounter. These images are less about performance than about presence—about how identity is lived, carried, and sustained. My formal education in photography provided a technical and conceptual foundation, but my practice has been shaped equally by independent work, travel, and long-term engagement with subject matter. I do not work quickly. Projects evolve through return, repetition, and revision. Photography, for me, is not just about the final photograph, it’s a way of life. I believe when you go looking for beauty, that beauty has a way of finding you and you find yourself in the process. Ultimately, my work is concerned with how meaning emerges through time. I am interested in what photographs can communicate when they refuse to fit the mold of classic photographic styles. Whether working with landscapes, animals, abstraction, or cultural portraiture, I seek images that hold complexity but ask viewer to slow down, look carefully, and remain present.