I am a photographer and naturalist whose current work focuses on the study and conservation of life in the Eastern Deciduous Forests of Ohio’s Allegheny Plateau, where I live. Building upon ecologist and botanist E. Lucy Braun’s pioneering study of the “aggregate of multitudinous forms” which populate this region, I am seeking to create an evocation of place and a portrait of life in all its interconnected variety at this time in history.
I began working with photography in Nigeria, and my 2012 project, “The Water of My Land,” on the impact of the oil industry in the riverine communities of the Niger Delta would define and inform the enduring themes of my work since then—the survival and extinction of endemic biodiversity, and the correlation between habitat and the human soul. Accordingly, I hold the landscapes of Nigeria’s Niger Delta and southern Ohio dear to my heart.
I am the recipient of an International Center for Photography Infinity Award, the Overseas Press Club Olivier Rebbot Award, a Special Commendation from the Frontline Club of London, and a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship. My images of fireflies and spiders were featured in Werner Herzog’s film Theatre of Thought. My photographs have appeared in The New York Times, The Financial Times Magazine, and Newsweek, and I am a Contributing Artist at Harper’s Magazine for which I have created extensive photographic essays on topics including a sanctuary for wolf hybrids maintained by U.S. combat veterans, copper mining on sacred indigenous land in Arizona, and Leicester City F. C.’s unprecedented English Premier League title bid during the 2015/16 season.
My book, Nightairs, about the bioluminescent displays of fireflies, was named as one of the 2023 Best Dutch Photo Books and was shortlisted for the Paris Photo-Aperture First PhotoBook Prize. My work is in the permanent collections of Huis Van Het Boek in The Hague and the Cincinnati Museum Center’s Museum of Natural History & Science. My recent exhibition at Etherton Gallery, “To the Dark and the Endless Skies,” with artist Kate Breakey, celebrated the beauty and diversity of insects.
