I began my photographic career in 1990 as a photojournalist with Illinois Times, an alternative weekly newspaper in Springfield, Illinois. I enjoy photographing people and specialize in informal portraiture, in black and white or in color.

Later on, I discovered infrared black and white film and I began making fine art landscapes of the Illinois prairie. This film lends a dreamy, other-worldly quality to the composition. Sometimes I hand-color the infrared prints.

Many people consider the Midwest landscape boring compared to, say, Hawaii or Colorado, but covering the miles as a photographer, I have found lots of subtle beauty here. You just have to slow down and look.

I've been working with medium format cameras, a Rollei and a Mamiya 7II, for the past five years. In the year 2000 I began working toward an MFA degree in photography at the Savannah College of Art and Design, where I learned to use a 4x5 view camera and to work in a much slower, more deliberative way.

While living in the South, I came upon a wealth of roadside curiosities to preserve on film and now, wherever I am, I continue to photograph old buildings and deteriorating cars, trucks, and signs. Someone told me recently that I photograph "the detritus of transportation beautifully."

My black and white images are silver gelatin prints--made with film, chemicals, and paper in the time-honored tradition of the art.

Bottom right photo by Joe C. P. Turner