A few years ago, I was sitting in my cubicle color correcting the photo of a $70,000 kitchen to match the correct shade of lemon yellow for a magazine, when I realized that there was more to life than this. I needed to find a way to get out of the cubicle. I had taken some photography classes when I was younger, but hadn’t touched a camera in years. It was then that I decided to start learning again.
I began taking classes at a local community college – first taking a basic film course, then digital – one at a time as my work would allow. I really didn’t know what I wanted to do with photography. Photojournalism wasn’t even in the back of my mind. The reports from New Orleans on the first anniversary of the floods hit me hard. I was angry and embarrassed that we allowed the residents of that city to be ignored. That night I booked a flight to spend a week talking to people and photographing the city, with the hopes of creating a book. Although nothing came of that project, the experience got me hooked.
I was born in 1972 in St. Paul, Minnesota, and currently live near Amsterdam, Netherlands.
