I lived in the West Hill neighborhood of Albany for five or six years before I began to photograph there. Arbor Hill and adjacent West Hill are really one neighborhood -- a complicated place with a very rich history as old as colonization. In this century, third- or fourth-generation Irish- and German-Americans have given way to waves of other immigrants - first Southern Blacks, then Caribbean, Asian, and Middle Eastern populations. It is poor, but solidly working class through many of its streets; it is rough, but retains much of what was once a glorious architectural beauty, now in many instances enhanced by the whimsical colors of today.

    This project began casually in late 1993, when I took a few shots in my neighborhood in Albany to show friends and colleagues in Europe, where I was living at the time. When I returned to live full time in Albany, and resumed photographing in the areas near my home and studio, I found that my attitude about the work had changed from the perspective of a frequent visitor to that of an insider. In this way, the work began to take on a more personal dimension.

    It is not the intention of this project to document the Arbor Hill neighborhood in the classic journalistic manner, so much as it is my desire to make a worthwhile body of work in the confines of my own territory, and to somehow show the poignant beauty of this American way of urban life. As an artist trained in painting, I use color as an expressive medium, sometimes even as the subject itself; equally, my lifetime in photography has given me a high regard for qualities of light.