For thirty years I have constructed what I photograph in the studio, combining objects and surfaces into new entities by the manipulation of light, space, and photographic materials. For composite work I use a computer as a natural extension of my way of making images and now everything out there is my palette; I am not restricted to the stuff I can haul into my studio. Fortunately I already had a group of themes and ideas underway when I gained access to a computer. Otherwise the question would have been: now that I have the freedom to do anything with images, what do I do?

Although now in addition to straight photographs I make images of objects that never existed, my composite images still have something of the odd relationship to reality that a straight photograph does. Both photographs and digital images can be fact or fiction or part way between. A digital image differs from a photograph in that it is fluid; it can change to another then another version. Fiction is waiting at the door. The author can keep or destroy the generations of change. Although certain variations and manipulations in its printing are possible, a negative is what it is.

We may think that we know more about what is real than our ancestors did. Until September 11, 2001 I had not been paying attention to the quantity of visual images from movies and television that are stored in our brains. They seem real enough, but usually we can sort them between fact and fiction. Seeing something real on television that the rational mind would designate, as over the top fiction is a disturbing experience. Being in the middle of something that is supposed to exist only in fiction is still unimaginable to those of us who were not there.

“Heraclitus said: “All is flux-nothing is stationary”. I am interested in changes in ideas, the continual reshaping of our mental map of the world as we know it. What is real? What is fiction? What is the relationship between the two?