I am a man of many hats. I am a lawyer, archaeologist, and a photographic artist. Currently, I am working on finishing my Ph.D. in Applied Anthropology at the University of South Florida and work as a lawyer and Photographic Artist in Tampa, Florida.

I have many interests as well including topics in History, Art, Science, Religion, and Philosophy. I see these topics as being interrelated and many of my projects incorporate all these areas in order to address specific sets of questions that I am trying to answer.

I see the camera as a means of recording the observations and findings I make as I go through life and the resultant image the art that I create from the pictures that I take. I want to use art to make a statement about my findings and to present the material of my work through artistic expression in order to reach a wider range of people. So often I find words limiting and not fully able to completely capture and transfer to others what I am fully seeing and understanding in the universe around me. Therefore, I find artistic expression as means to help in that communication process.

Being An Artist

My creative work is deeply rooted in my desire to capture the divine in nature and in human interactions and form and to create narratives with my photographic art that comments on the nature of a contrived world and what is real in a way that pushes beyond the limits of comfortability and understanding in order to bring into the forefront of the mind a new reality. A lot of my work incorporates my fascination and interest in spirituality, cultural constructs, and self-identity. I like to explore ways to create self-contained narratives in the images that I create that bring about new meanings and emotions. I look to challenge people’s ideas of what they have come to understand about the world they live in and to engage them with images that forces each person to consider the idea: Are you willing to abandon everything you have come to believe for absolute truth?

Further, I am also interested in exploring the relationships of body, camera, and the resultant image in terms of challenging notions of self and other by coming to terms with body and space in a process of giving over to otherness through being both the subject and object. In this regard I am currently working on projects that explore masculinity and the contrived nature of our cultural understanding in what it means to be a “man” in the binary dichotomy of male-female perceptions and what is considered appropriate masculine behavior. Several projects that I am working on include exploring how identity both in terms of the male and female form and the sense of self function in relationship to the structures of visuality and the discourse of the male or female nude breaking away from the entanglement of eroticism without compromising the sexual identity and aesthetic of the sexual embodiment.

I like to experiment with new photographic techniques and more established techniques that I have not employed previously in my work. I like to focus on the process and do not see the final image as an end point but a starting position for further investigation and creation.

A lot of my work has been informed by the photographic artists Robert Mapplethorpe, Jerry Uelsmann, Sally Mann, Collier Schorr, Barry Underwood, Gary Schneider, Ma Liuming, and Zhang Huan; as well as from surrealist artists like Salvador Dalí, Max Ernst, and Hans Bellmer. I also think that my work has been influenced by the writings of critic and writer, Nicolas Bourriaud along with Peter Denney and Kenneth Slessor.

Besides photographic methods, I am also interested in performance art, art installations, video art, and sculpture.

I tend to see life as in terms of being an Epic. Therefore, I like to live life in Epic.

Being An Archaeologist

Currently, I am working toward my Ph.D. in applied anthropology with a concentration in archaeology, archaeological science, and visual anthropology. My interests lie in answering questions about material culture, cognitive theory as it relates to cultural artifacts such as works of art, trade and movement in the cultural landscapes, iconography of ancient cultures, ancient texts and manuscripts, societal organization and development, and cultural systems. My geographical areas of interest are the cultures centered in the Mediterranean, North Africa, and the Levant. My research currently involves an XRF study of pottery found in Malta and Sicily in order to answer questions about trade and societal organization of the Ancient Maltese people during the Neolithic.

Being A Lawyer

As a lawyer, I specialize in business law, intellectual and cultural property, art law, international trade and project finance, and property law. I am a member of the Florida Bar and received my J.D. and MBA with a concentration in Finance from American University in Washington, D.C.