-as in slippery slope. "Slope" is one of my favorite photos (color transparency) from the 1980s. I made it on vacation in Maine with my parents, the first vacation I took with them as an adult. "Slope" is also one of the first key images that helped me understand what my photographic work is all about: perception & reality.

My career in styling and coloring hair fit nicely into my obsession with perception and reality. Spending four decades discerning individual style and personality to artistically craft a "look" that would project such for my clients was always what I enjoyed. Likewise, crafting photos that do the same, be it what I want to express or what a given observation is about, is the same thing in my mind.

The photograph "Slope" is the perfect image to initiate the questioning of reality. At a shallow look, it is a noose. At a deeper look, it is not. That is the key that opens the door: Is what I see there -really There? If it is not, then what is It that I am "seeing"? Where did That come from? Who was it that put It there? And why, to what end? Perception is indeed a very slippery slope. It is a photo of a child's swing; you place your foot into the loop and swing off into the air from the rock ledge behind. If innocence and evil can so easily be confused, what of all the in-betweens?