I have a long, passionate interest in photography and its influence on culture and society. I'm interested that a photograph represents memory in a way that is much more concrete and immediate than the images in our heads. At the same time, the photograph represents the world in ways that are new, subjective and always context-dependent.

So that means that irony is good in my mind.

I teach digital photography as well as traditional, wet-lab, black and white photography at a community college in a Phoenix suburb. Years ago, though, I put a flash on my camera, and I was astounded at how much pictorial power that gave me. Opening the shutter in synch with that burst of light opens up new worlds and allows me to be a picture-maker.

So now I own a couple of cheap radio remote triggers and use them to synch a couple of old strobes. I like being able to photograph on my own, without assistants, carrying what I need. It is photography's ability to record the individual's point of view, which, when clearly stated, make images worth stopping to look at. Finding that voice, in the midst of modern media, boring conventionality, and budget and time constraints, is really the challenge. Finding that voice is also a very compelling problem.

I use Flickr as a way to make and show sketches about light, color and pictorial structure. I do this under the pretense of creating a visual document of traces of humanity and decay in Phoenix, Arizona, which is a “modern” western American city. The democratization of image-making has long been a central interest in photography. Publishing these “sketches" is a way to participate in the photographic process of discovery and invention as well as an immediate reach to an audience.

I'm now on Instagram: silvers_dk.