On Engagement with ‘Form’

Haleakalā, Summit, Maui, HI

An Introduction

What does it mean to push the boundaries of your creative practice—not by abandoning structure, but by confronting it directly? On Engagement with ‘Form’ is a series of essays that will explore this question through the lens of landscape photography, where photography becomes less about replication and more about conversation—with self, with place, and with process. On Engagement with ‘Form’ is an ongoing series examining the creative limits, disciplines, and personal conditions that shape expressive photography—but applies to any engagement with creative expression. It considers form not simply as technique or style, but as the full constellation of forces—internal and external—that define how we create. Through essays grounded in place, practice, and process, the series will try to illuminate how engagement with these boundaries can open pathways toward deeper artistic understanding.

Edges: Where Things Occur

The first essay in the series, Edges: Where Things Occur, explores, in five parts coming out in the coming weeks, the central role of Place in landscape photography and art in general.  I consider how our relationships with the places we inhabit—geographically and imaginatively—shape our art. Drawing from personal experience in the Pioneer Valley and the insights of writers like Tom Robbins and Barry Lopez, I examine how repeated engagement with a specific geography—its histories, moods, and physical constraints—can serve as both limitation and wellspring for creative growth. 

What does it mean to push your art to “the wildest edge of edges”? That line from Tom Robbins stuck with me—provocative, elusive, and full of promise. Over the course of these five posts, I set out to explore that question through the lens of artistic form—not just as technique or process, but as the whole shape of a creative life: the tools we use, the places we return to, the personal and practical constraints we carry with us, and the relationships we build with the land.

Nubble Light, Cape Neddick, York, ME

Part 1: Edges & Exploration

Next week, in Part One, I introduce a broader, more personal understanding of form—not as rigid rulebook but as the unique structure each of us inhabits while engaged in creative work. Drawing on Robbins, Joe Cornish, Ralph Gibson, and my own evolving practice, I frame form as both limitation and invitation—something to engage with deliberately, if we’re to inch closer to the “realm of magic.

Part 2: Limits & the Zen Universe

Part Two explores those limits more directly: the geography I work in, the constraints I carry, and how artists can transform restriction into source. I look to Robbins again—his “Zen universe” of sentence-by-sentence writing—and consider how similar attentiveness might guide image-making. Whether it’s a fogbound ridgeline or a self-imposed focal-length restriction, limits become launch points.

Part 3: Anamorphosis & Engagement with Place

In Part Three, I turn to Place as a critical component of form. Not just the backdrop, but an active shaper of vision and practice. For those of us who return, again and again, to familiar terrain—working within the same ridgelines, seasons, and atmospheres—place becomes both partner and teacher. Drawing from Joe Cornish, Guy Tal, and others, I look at how sustained, even constrained, engagement with place can deepen not only our photography but our capacity for seeing.

Plum Island, Essex County, MA

 Part 4: Beginnings

Part Four goes further back, into the “architecture” that shaped my imagination. I revisit the rural landscape of my childhood—the sounds, scents, and structures that etched themselves into memory—and consider how those early impressions continue to influence how I perceive and compose. At the heart of it is one unforgettable Easter morning: a menacing rumble, the fog pierced by an unexpected and unforgettable encounter with wonder that continues to reverberate in the images I make today.

 Part 5: Reciprocity

In Part Five, I return to Poland Brook Wildlife Management Area and take up Barry Lopez’ call for reciprocity: to enter a place as you would a conversation—with humility, attentiveness, and care not to make too much of yourself. I reflect on the quiet relationships we build with places over time, how those conversations shape our art, and why some of them—like our best images—are better shared in the spirit of nourishment, not display. As Lopez reminds us, “We keep each other alive with our stories.”

This series is both a meditation on process and a kind of field report from the edges—those physical and psychological boundaries where things happen, where images begin, and where meaning takes shape.