Portrait of a Forgotten Onion Photograph - Limited Edition of 12

I picked up my first camera at age seven, my father’s simple Ansco Cadet. My interest in photography flourished throughout my adolescence. My post-secondary education started at the University of Missouri, known for its journalism school. My intention was to major in photojournalism. One day, I summoned up the nerve to show the chairman of the department my portfolio. He brusquely commented that my photographs had a fine art bent and that art school would be a better fit. The following year, I transferred to the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. Ironically, my art school curriculum gravitated towards filmmaking and creating sculptures that explored visual phenomena and perception. That work catalyzed my interest in the bourgeoning art and technology genre. My fascination with visual perception carried over to my studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. There I learned about the subject on a deeper level. I also learned, while participating in a class experiment, that I have monocular vision—an inability to perceive three-dimensional space. It’s no surprise I gravitated towards photography at an early age—I see the world much the same way a photograph appears. After earning my degree, I continued working at MIT as a research fellow and experimented with making virtual artwork, images that were only visible as fleeting afterimages. Later, I entered the field of special effects and 3-D animation. I eventually became disenchanted with the work and returned to still photography.