A 330-foot long covered bridge, built in 1862, crosses that Stanislaus River at Knights Ferry. I walked halfway down the length of the bridge and saw a man walking towards me. I waited for him to pass, then turned and waited again for him to reach the opening at the end of the bridge, in order to get the maximum amount of scale incongruity out of the image. I deliberately allowed the background to burn out – I wanted the man to stand out in the abstracted glare of the mid morning sun. He appears to be fleeing down a long tunnel towards that light, as if he is caught in a bad dream. The antique interior of the bridge adds context to his flight. It is as if he is being chased by time itself.

The small figure of the child clings to the towering wall of a massive museum. The wall symbolically represents the world as a child might see it: overwhelming, unyielding, and intimidating. Yet the young boy seems to test that world by throwing his weight against the wall, just as he may someday deal with the challenges of life itself. Meanwhile another child plays at the fountain in the center of the courtyard. He also seems to be symbolically testing the world as he sees it, and in his own way. Even the bright red container on the ground by an entry door plays a symbolic role here – it links the building’s doorway to the child in red, functioning as a territorial marker. It also creates a triangle linking both children to each other and to the entrance to the building.

The specter of poverty, homelessness, disease, and death hangs over every city in India. I saw it at close hand twenty years ago, and saw it again in 2008. These men were lying near the gutter just outside of our hotel. I photographed them asleep in the dust of a Jaipur street and converted the color image to black and white, making the scene appear as grim as it really was. They do not see the naked child, a member of their extended family, brandishing a pair of crossed sticks over their exhausted bodies. It almost seemed as if the child had conquered these men. I would like to think that this child might someday have a better shot at life, a chance to live in a way that has so far eluded these adult members of his family. In that way, perhaps, he may yet triumph.

The cemetery was locked, but fortunately the image I wanted to make was right in front of me, an easy shot through the bars of the entrance gate. The key symbol is the hand on the back of the tomb. It seems to beckon to us, as if, after all these years, it was waving us on to eternity. The Dutch, who ruled Cochin in the 17th century, left the bones of its shopkeepers and traders in massive tombs, as upright and stolid as the Dutch character. By converting this image to black and white, I make them blend into each other, a continuous row call of mortality.

We spent an evening and day in Cambodia's capital city. The most chilling moment came at dusk, when we visited the fields where just thirty years ago, the execution squads of Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge murdered thousands of Cambodian citizens. The monsoon rains regularly uncover human bones. This handful of bones, neatly stacked in a hollowed out tree trunk by someone who cared enough to do so, and illuminated in the warm glow of the evening sun, speaks volumes in symbolic terms. These human remains can certainly represent the nature of evil, but they could also symbolize great courage, because many of these people who died were Buddhists who publicly protested the violence in Cambodian life. The tidy piles represent honor as well – they were not left lying on the ground where they came to the surface, but rather gathered together and displayed as a memorial to those who died here. And finally there is the context for this wideangle image – the growing tree symbolizes the continuation of life, serving as an ironic shelter for the bones of those who perished here.

I first photographed this doorstop in front of a Santa Fe art gallery in 2006.

(Click on thumbnail below). I used it then as an example of layering. On my most recent visit, I photographed it again but in a different way. Instead of inviting my viewers to go inside the gallery, I build the image around the symbolism of an Indian turned into a chair, and put into the context of a poster promoting wine tasting, featuring other Indians. A heavily romanticized version of Indian culture is heavily marketed by the Santa Fe art community and this doorstop is intended to stop visitors in their tracks, and perhaps go inside to buy something. I see it as symbolizing the Indian as a sentimental, passive and mildly amusing representative of the stereotypical Old West. It transforms a personification of what once was a proudly independent culture into a clever contemporary convenience – a chair. I also see it as a metaphor for the proverbial “wooden Indian,” – a throwback to the “cigar store Indians” that once advertised cigar shops. Only here, the product becomes art and wine. This time I was able to photograph the scene in late afternoon light, adding a shadow to the scene. The shadow, slowly enveloping the wine-tasting poster, adds still another layer of symbolism to this image. The shadow replicates the shape of the Indian, but in shadow, the Indian appears as faceless as his culture -- a culture often treated as a historical artifact. Ironically, when I compare this image with my 2005 photograph, I notice that the painted Indian seems to be gradually fading away, just as the gradual erosion of American Indian tradition.