Monuments of the City — Overview
This project began when I was a little boy, examining old buildings with my parents and siblings. They renovated buildings and I began to understand that not all vacant buildings are abandoned, not all derelict facades are ruined, not all strange smells are decay.
My thesis work was pretty easy to begin … I knew that form was the best way to position my photography.
I use medium format cameras with color film. As certain films became available and then pulled from the market, I was able to create on a Fujifilm 120mm product, finally settling on a particular aesthetic.
My photo processor was down the street and that carried me through the first year of graduate school. Each week, I fretted a work product that consisted of five rolls of film a week, with a rolling circuit of development, self scans in my studio, and then review among my thesis committee advisors and other students. As the first year wore on, I was confident.
But the processor moved to another location, and suddenly they didn’t develop my film size any longer. I found a processor in a college town about a hundred miles away. We developed a mail-order relationship and that was fruitful for another two years. And so I finished my graduate thesis with no hiccups. I continue my style and interest a decade later.
Monuments of the City is not confined to the past—it’s a project that speaks to what I say photography is, showing my command of form with a language particular to the grain of the film, the juxtaposition of space and shadows, and use of slow meditative movements.
Initially Monuments of the City plied familiar streets in Indianapolis, resulting in an exhibition of my master work at Bona Thompson Center, the gallery of the Irvington Historical Society.
The resulting work was arresting. David Nickel curated the work and guided the print process and framing choices, but designed the gallery space based on his understanding of how folks discover/encounter these buildings while driving through the city. David’s design work included retail stores such as Bloomingdale’s and Disney’s Christmas shops. One season, David and the team he lead prepared 23 semi-trucks of store displays … ready to embed in department stores. For Disney, his work created Christmas for generations, Luckily, he has a way of intuiting and interpreting my work that is congruent with my vision and elevates it beyond what I imagine.
(More) Monuments of the City
In 2016 after earning my MFA, I set myself free from the constraints of the graduate thesis grind. I knew could discover more of the thesis if I saw it as life-long work.
Good choice.
I traveled back around Indianapolis, continuing to use medium-format cameras.
I saw a darkness in my work that I think was a reflection to the times. In Fountain Square I was part of the gentrification that artists bring to distressed economic zones (and by the way, in the span of seven years I was gentrified out, too). G.C. Murphy Building was a temporary art gallery for a community art museum, and their storefront space was fun.
As usual, buildings that were in holding patterns caught my eye. For more than a decade, this storefront (2015) remained as it had been, unused and waiting. It remains as it has been (2025)
Indianapolis itself was transitioning. This underpass frequently flooded and eventually was corrected but for months the work cut off parts of the near east side of Indianapolis from the vitality within its neighborhood system, exacerbating food deserts and gerrymandering people from their own power. Connectedness is a lifeblood.
In February 2016, I spent a week in Washington, D.C., with several film cameras. Daily I walked from Foggy Bottom to the Lincoln Memorial and the Kennedy Center. This image (February 2016) of the Watergate hotel and a nearby embassy above the horizon of ancient buildings reminded me that dark times in America have come and gone.