Portraits: Faces and Profiles of Utility is an ongoing collection of photographs of barns and corn cribs on the Iowa landscape begun in 2006.

Often, the subject matter of barns and cribs is portrayed as little more than a photographic cliché. Countless photographs merely interpret the structures in a provincial and subjectively popular “postcard and calendar” manner. The images become empty symbols signifying nothing more that sentimentality and nostalgia. Nothing is more depressing to me than to see an old barn falling down. I try to picture them differently to explore them as sculptures. I am interested in them as figure and ground as it relates to perception.

The approach I employ is to find a subject that can be depicted in a descriptive manner that includes a sense of the surrounding isolation of the object not yet abandoned. I welcome the nuance of lighting, of color, of texture and of isolation which feeds a perception. I include as much ground as can be balanced with figure to bring focus to the icon (2) upon the landscape.

By avoiding a quaint picturesque, my images seek to expand upon an objective depiction to present iconographic portraits. It is with this approach that I hope to portray something in addition to starkness and sadness. I have a certain in-bred affinity for these objects. They have become more than just buildings. I have an attachment to them. I feel defiance and see character expressed by simply standing strong. Like certain aspects of our cultural beliefs about the Midwestern farmer, I find the barns and cribs to be truly stoic figures in a changing cultural landscape.