These images are a study on how cancer can change ones view on time. I have always been fascinated with the concept of time. How is time measured?  Is time actually real or something that serves to record history between life and death?  What do we remember when we look back on our life?  The project “Beyond Time” explores how cancer changes one’s perspective on “linear time.”  I believe that time, before, during and after cancer, becomes more dimensional, a spherical phenomenon with a heightened awareness.  A minute during treatment  felt like eternity, the clock ticking slower, and surroundings  clouded and surreal.

I started taking a lot of self-portrait time exposures leading up to my diagnosis of throat cancer (I never was a smoker, so I was shocked)  I would set my camera on a tripod and place a neutral density on my lens to hold back the light so that a proper exposure would be around two minutes. I would then run into the field of view, stay still for about 15 seconds then run out of the field of view, thus; I would only be partially exposed.  As I look back on these images before cancer and those that followed,  I am sure that the cancer subconsciously affected how I looked at myself.  In these photographs,  I  looked  like an apparition. (1. a ghost or ghost like image of a person. 2. the act of becoming viable) Partially there. Was I leaving this world or was I coming back for a reset?  It has occurred to me these images reflected someone grappling with time. I was using my photography as a form of therapy.  One of the first pictures that I remember looking at during my cancer treatments, was an image entitled: “Wasteland” taken in Atlantic City.  I remember feeling that like the image, my body had something in it that did not belong.