The past speaks to me. Sometimes it screams, but mostly it just whispers. I don't always hear the whispers -- until the past jumps to life for a single heartbeat as an old storefront becomes a blur from the car window. My breath catches as I realize that I have traveled the same road many times and never noticed it before.
The places I photograph are relics of an earlier era, stuck in the process of decay - abandoned houses, old country stores, churches or one-room schoolhouses. Surviving the passage of time, they are mere fragments of once flourishing communities, now off the beaten path, in areas that have been bypassed in one way or another. After photographing some of these places time and again, they become as familiar as family. The changes from time to time are often subtle, but sometimes quite startling. When I go back to re-photograph a place and find nothing but rubble, it is like visiting the grave of a dear friend.
The past coming to life is not a new experience for me. As a child I spent many happy hours with my grandmother sifting though her box of old family photographs. Most of the people in them were dead long before I was born and the places they had called home left to the ravages of time. But oh how they came to life for me as that faraway look crossed her face and the stories came pouring forth.
That feeling of the past coming to life is perhaps the greatest inspiration for my work. When something speaks to me, I have to photograph it. If I don't, the whispers get louder and haunt me until I do.