Ten Winters is a personal, ten-year documentary project centered on small American towns that have evolved around one dominant industry or resource. The parameters are just that, guidelines to shape an open-ended exploration. It is not my intent to fully document any one industry or town, rather it is to move through them, letting these places and people direct me, documenting what presents itself.

I drive much, and loiter even more. I have coffee and chat, I turn down uncharted country roads, I knock on the doors of strangers, and get as dirty as I can at all manner of industrial sites - climbing oil derricks in North Dakota, or crawling through coal mines in West Virginia. It is thrilling. And I live vicariously, if briefly, through all of the characters I meet and photograph.

I typically spend only a few days photographing on any particular site or locale - choosing instead to spend most of my time purposefully getting "lost" in the surrounding communities.

It is a meditative process.

The medium influences the images dramatically. I travel lightly, with a couple of old-school Rolleiflexes and a Mamiya 6, shooting film and relying almost exclusively on available light - and the kindness of strangers.

It is a personal documentary project that seeks to neither fully reveal nor define a specific industry or people, rather it exists to portray a brief but incisive snapshot of the community as a whole, recognizing the interaction of industry and the community and people that surround and support it. In this fashion I hope to preserve and convey a facet of the American landscape that is rapidly disappearing.