You wouldn’t know it from this blog (considering that this is my first post of the year), but 2021 was an opportunity for me to stretch my wings a bit and expand horizons for my work. For much of the last ten years, I’ve been primarily focused on assisting other artists in St. Louis, whether that was through Photo Flood Saint Louis, curating, teaching or mentoring. The effect of this was that I had lost sight of promoting myself and my work as an artist–to the degree that it had been more than ten years since my last solo exhibition. This year, all of that changed.

The year began auspiciously enough with a New Year’s Day shoot at the Cotton Freight Depot Building with a group of photo friends, a Photo Flood in Kinloch, and an explore of an abandoned plot of land along the Mississippi River with a friend that I had not seen in a long time.

Nonetheless, there were some challenges that I was struggling to get a handle on during this time. Due to Covid-19, Photo Flood Saint Louis had fallen about six months behind in our planned attempt to complete all 79 city neighborhoods in 2021, so in the Summer of 2020, I began the corrective action of conducting two main events per month in order to catch up, which carried over into the first few months of 2021. This, combined with the pressures of my workload at my day job and the stresses of the ongoing pandemic (that I believe I unintentionally downplayed for myself), created some issues of anxiety that I continue to work to get a handle on. I’ve always dealt with anxiety, but it’s never been something outside of my ability to easily control until now–who knows, maybe it is just the pent-up expression of several stressful years? Either way, it is now something that I must actively work to balance for myself, and no longer can I rely on my body’s ability to compartmentalize and move on. *Ahem* Moving on….

In February, Photo Flood Saint Louis finally caught up with its programmed schedule when we completed the 79th and final St. Louis City neighborhood of West End (our 103rd Photo Flood). For me personally, and for the Group as a whole, this was a major achievement, and marked the completion of an attempt to see and photograph in all corners of the city, as well as to tell the histories embedded in those places. We are the first organized group of photographers to set foot in and explore each of the city’s neighborhoods in any uniform way. Around this same time, our website at photofloodstl.org was recognized as one of five finalists in St. Louis Magazine’s A-List Award competition for “Best Blog” (we did not win).

As mentioned in the introduction to this post, this year has marked a careful transition for me toward promoting my own work as an artist. Beginning in the late Fall of 2020, I started to submit applications for my project Mound City Chronicle to galleries and exhibition venues throughout the region. This project, a decade in the making behind-the-scenes, was something that I badly wanted to share with audiences–something that I needed to share as an artist. During this same time, I sequenced the exhibition as a book, and began to systematically submit publication proposals to art book publishers both near and far. Though rejection letters were mounting for both the exhibition and book, I somehow thought it best to be prepared for an eventual exhibition (a ‘build it and they will come’ approach). I put together a zine for Mound City Chronicle, which I began selling along with prints to front the funds needed for printing, matting and framing the exhibition. The plan worked, and I was able to sell more than 30 copies of the zine and a dozen prints to accommodate for the production of the work for exhibition (I still had some out of pocket costs but they were greatly reduced). A local retailer, STL-Style, even picked up a special edition of the zine, which are still available to purchase through their website in very limited quantities.

The next few months brought about some interesting freelance opportunities, where I filled in to run the technical side of a lecture at the International Photography Hall of Fame, photographed St. Louis’ most famous cemetery at night, and shot the Center of Creative Arts’ annual COCA-Cabana event (alongside some friends).

During this time, I was looking toward the future of my photographic work, even as I continued to prepare Mound City Chronicle for exhibition, and conceptualized a new focus for myself: the National Road. The National Road was the United States’ first “interstate” and a primary driver of westward expansion. The route stretches from Baltimore to St. Louis, and I began planning and photographing along this route in April. Already, this body of work (called, Manifested) has produced some favorite images.

In May, I was contacted by the Contemporary Gallery at St. Louis Community College, Forest Park to notify me that my submission for Mound City Chronicle was accepted for exhibition as part of their Fall 2021 season. Because of my early preparation, I was ready to go and able to immediately begin promoting the show. In June, I was invited to tape an interview with Steve Potter for his longtime program, STL City Corner. After taping, I made an image of Potter in the TV studio that became integrated into my Mound City Chronicle series.

August started off with a couple of photos published in an article by Chris Naffziger for St. Louis Magazine. Also early in the month, I was invited to record an interview about the accomplishments of Photo Flood Saint Louis with Sarah Fenske for St. Louis On the Air, on St. Louis Public Radio.

In mid-August, Photo Flood Saint Louis held its annual members’ meeting where I announced that PFSTL admins, Dave Adams and Mike Matney, would be filling in to lead the majority of Floods in the coming year in order for me to focus on personal projects. This is a breather that was a long time coming and much needed. Because of this, I now have the opportunity to focus more of my efforts on my art making.

Mound City Chronicle opened on August 30th, amid Covid protocols that initially restricted visitorship to special appointment only, later relaxed to limited hours. Despite these obstacles to attendance, I feel as though the exhibition, which featured 55 works, was a success. In mid-September, I gave an artist lecture to students in the photography department of the school.

In early September, I travelled to Ohio for the dual purposes of meeting up with my friend and longtime collaborator, Chris Naffziger, to photograph the network of underground cellars beneath Cincinnati’s Over-the-Rhine neighborhood, and to work a bit on my National Road project. It was very interesting to see a city commercialize its underground environment with lighting, tours and programming.

Later that month, I shot the second of two shoots for my wife’s new podcast, Don’t Get in the Van, which was a lot of fun (I also built their website)!

My work was also featured in an article on underground caves and beer in Terrain Magazine.