This mural, painted on the outside of a colorfully painted Mexican restaurant, is a fantasy speaking of an idyllic culture and place. An Aztec altarpiece, a dancer in flowing pink dress, the inevitable guitar player wearing a sombrero, and even an Aztec temple, lure prospective diners to the pleasures of a Mexican dinner. The reality, however, is expressed in the bike rack just below it. I made this image early on a Sunday morning, and its hard-pressed workers arrive by bicycle, not by car. Each bike is shackled to steel bars embedded in concrete.

A huge photograph of an American Indian chief looms over the Denver Cultural Center.

It is several stories high, and can be seen at a great distance. It is intended to draw visitors to a local museum, yet to me it speaks more forcefully as a requiem – a token of remembrance for culture that has virtually been exterminated. I framed the photograph of this long dead chief in shadowy leaves -- an incongruous symbol of hope and life.

This faded sign is a reminder of DeathValley’s isolation. I felt the wear and tear on the sign tells a story about the wear and tear of the place. I include the uneven edge of the wall holding the message as context. The colors also tell a story – Death Valley is a uniquely American place. There is nothing quite like it anywhere in the world. The sign is painted in red and blue on a white background – the national colors.

Old signs that tenaciously cling to the bricks and boards of abandoned buildings make wonderful subjects. This sign was on the side of a boarded up building on a Green River side street. I abstract the sign, asking the viewer to read the fragments and come to their own conclusions about what was once going on here. Actually the sign that speaks to us here represents the hard playing, hard drinking, and hard smoking male of the early 20th century. This was a billiard parlor, and it offered all that came along with a good game of pool. The sign has turned a coppery color, and I include four of the metal stars inserted in the bricks to keep the wall intact. They have obviously done their job.

The exterior wall of what once was the Kanab Hotel speaks to every photographer. It embraces, accidentally or on purpose, the entire history of the medium. At left, a window ad for a portrait studio portrays the process as it was done in the 19th century. Meanwhile, the sign at right signals the presence of a Photo Shop. Needless to say, most 21st century photographers would read that as Photoshop.

Soho is an eclectic recycled New York neighborhood. (Its name is an acronym for “SOuth of HOuston Street.”) It was formerly known as “Hells Hundred Acres” – a warren of early 20th Century sweatshops. It was gentrified in the 60s and 70s and today is known for its shops, galleries, antiques, and lofts that sell for millions. Not to mention entertainment. The walls of its buildings are plastered with posters advertising pleasures that range from listening to music to watching murder. It is appropriate that this pair of young wall readers are dressed largely in black – they seem to blend in to the posters and become absorbed by them visually as they are verbally. I compose this image as a series of layers, starting with a No Parking sign in the foreground with a pair of bikes locked to it, as my anchor. The pair of wall readers in the second layer echoes the pair of bikes in the first layer. The posters themselves make up the third layer – most of them requiring a context that goes far beyond my own in order to understand what they are promoting. (As my own kids would be quick to tell me, “It’s not meant for you, dad.”) A fourth layer is a bit grittier – a huge graffiti signature is painted on the wall partially behind the posters. The fifth and final layer is the old brick wall itself – a surface supporting the posters, the graffiti, and even an air conditioner that has bars over it to keep it from being stolen.