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Three years passed before I could compose photographs in Providence, Rhode Island. While attending college in one of New England’s post-industrial ports, I repeatedly searched in vain for a frame that might resonate with my adolescent aesthetic, some strain of ‘nature photography.’ This vision stemmed from my childhood in the sublime alpine panoramas of the Colorado Rockies, which I had grown to celebrate through images. But that naive approach was irrelevant in Providence.

Artistically unbound and awash, I finally attempted to define that aesthetic in negative terms, to capture what might constitute its opposite. My sterile engineering classrooms, a bleak parking lot under an indelibly overcast sky, a fluorescent-lit cement stairwell–what could inspire in these entirely forgettable places?

I see this collection of photos as merely a sketch, a rough meditation on some expressive possibilities in lifeless environs. It is highly personal. But what does it mean to you?

In The Fray Contributor