I received my MFA in photography from the San Francisco Art Institute in l981. My first major project, Form Follows Finance: A Survey of the South of Market 1979-1982, addressed issues of home in light of rampant gentrification. Using a 4x5 view camera, 35mm slide film and audiotape, I made a multi-format color document of the lives of the area's residents and the fate of the buildings as the economic transformation of my San Francisco neighborhood unfolded. This project consists of 40 16"x20" color prints and a 15 minute audio-visual piece.

I continued to explore the politics of home with the project Mercedes Montaño: My Memories From Before and After the Liberation of Nicaragua Libre. In this piece, produced between l985 and 1987, I documented the efforts of the US-supported Contra War on one Sandinista family in Managua, Nicaragua. I lived with the Montaños during two summers while recording their personal history under the brutal regime of the dictator, Somoza, and their ensuing struggle to make their newly liberated country succeed. In the final project there are 25 11"x14" color prints with 5 text panels and a 10 minute audio-visual piece fusing the narration of the grandmother with images from the project.

In l988 my first daughter was born and my father was diagnosed with dementia. I began photographing the flotsam and jetsam of family life. These remnants were pieced together to create the series Housebound. By blending black and white and color images into diptychs and triptychs, I created a poetic narrative addressing the complexities of growing up and growing old. This project continues to unfold as my daughters move through their teens and my mother perseveres into her 90’s. Currently there are 50 images printed 16"x20" and 20"x24". The work has also been formatted as an artist's book.

Trees: Between Chaos and Grace brings together a collection of 25 large-scale color landscape photographs. In this body of work, I look at the sublime patience and often brutal force of nature as a way to enter into a state of wilderness. At last able to wander alone in the woods, I have begun to make photographs of landscapes that speak to the power of change and adaptation, themes that seem to run consistently throughout my work.

My photographs have been shown and collected. I have received three NEA grants, and various other awards. I have taught photography throughout the Bay Area since 1982 and for the past eight years I have been a full time lecturer in photography in the Visual Studies Department at the University of California, Berkeley.