Photography has always felt like cheating to me, as if it were art that was half done before I even started. Dismembering my old prints of mostly documentary photos and reassembling them into franken-collages turns out to be much more satisfying. Who would have thought that adding the element of creativity to observation and composition would make art? As a side benefit, I get rid of all my excess inventory that I will never go to the trouble of selling. As I finish and photograph each piece, it leaps out of my life into recycle heaven, to be reborn as a Starbucks cup, toilet paper tube, or maybe some exotically shaped packing cushion. I get to create and purge simultaneously without having to vomit onto a canvas.

Constructed from images collected in Laos, Texas, and Utah

Upper image from Bath, Maine