I started making lens-based images in 2023 after a long career as a professor of Japanese culture and cinema at Middlebury College. A guiding principle of my artistic work is expressed in the Japanese word miren — a feeling of lingering attachment for a lost time, love, or experience. The medium of photography singularly conveys the layered emotions of miren. A photograph captures a moment but also reminds us of a time gone forever. Pictures are reliquaries of all we have lost or treasured. I am also drawn to the process of compositing photographs — combining images to create a different sense of reality or a dreamscape of the mind.

I am a minimalist at heart. I am inspired by the spare compositions in films by Ozu and in photographs by Hiroshi Sugimoto or Rinko Kawauchi. I am drawn to the incomplete, the unfinished, the worn and tarnished — anything with a feeling of wabi-sabi, the Japanese aesthetic of simplicity and imperfection. Living for over a year in Tokyo in the late 1970s and in my beloved Kyoto for long sojourns since then, I am continually struck by the vibrance and immediacy of Japanese visual arts. I continue to strive for my own expression of that ineffable appeal. I live in Vermont and the natural beauty that surrounds my rural home is also a constant source of wonder as the turn of each season reveals a new palette and refreshed quality of light.

juried and invited group exhibitions

The Shape of Things, Praxis Gallery, 2136 Ford Parkway PMB 215, St. Paul, MN, May 17 - June 14, 2025. Juror, Alan Shefland (Withered Petals)

Fine Art Photography Awards 11th Edition 2024-2025, two series and one single image nominated: in amateur division: Up/Rooted Series (Conceptual category), Wings (People category), and Birches Series (Nature category)

Living and Photographing in an Imperfect Union, The Photographer’s Eye Collective and Gallery, Escondido, CA, March 3 - May 31, 2025, Juror, Arthur Ollman (Two works selected: Reliquary and Diploma)

She, A Smith Gallery, Johnson City , TX, December 20, 2024 - January 30, 2025, Juror, Polly Gaillard (Reflection), selected for “the 27”

Portrait: Self and Others, PhotoPlace Gallery, Middlebury, VT, May 3 - May 24, 2024. Juror, Aline Smithson (Cousins)

In the Periphery, Light Factory Photo Arts Center, Charlotte, NC, April 20 - May 13, 2024. Juror, Brittani Taylor (Reliquary)

Daydreams and Night Lights, Radiant Aberration and zoneFIVE Gallery, Colorado Springs, CO, October 6 - November 30, 2023. Juror, Sandra Klein (Forbid My Tears)

Water Is Sacred, ACCI Gallery, Berkeley, CA, September 1 - October 8, 2023. Juror, Susanna Lamaina (Hold Off the Earth Awhile and Weeping Brook)

TPS 31: The International Competition, Texas Photographic Society,  Nancy Fyfe Cardozier Gallery, The University of Texas Permian Basin, Odessa, Texas, August 28 - October 6, 2023. Juror: Charlotte Cotton (Swimmer’s Dream)

Permaculture: Art of the Natural World, Indianapolis Art Center, Indianapolis, ID, August 19 - October 29, 2023. Juror: Jo Banister (Two works selected: Next Big Step and New Frontier)

Solar, Pour-d Gallery, Rockford, MI. June 17 - September 1, 2023. Juror, Tree Anderson (Two works selected: Peaches on Green and Morning Sunlight)

Innovations 2023 the 32nd Annual International Open Juried Exhibition, International Society of Experimental Artists, Cultural Center of Cape Cod, South Yarmouth, MA, September 12 - October 7, 2023. Jurors, Nancy Barch, Lia Rothstein (Nefertiti at the Apocalypse)

Completely Color, Inter-Society Color Council, Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY, June 11 - 15, 2023. Jurors, Mark Fairchild, Danielle Siembieda-Gribben (Deconstructed Poppy)

Flower Power, CORE Art Space Gallery, Lakewood, CO, May 12 - 29, 2023. Juror, Michael Paglia (Iris)

Spark! Fueling a Love of Birds, Birds of Vermont Museum, Huntington, VT, May 1 - October 31, 2023. Juror, Kir Talmadge  (New Spirit)

books and selected articles

Word and Image in Japanese Cinema, edited with Dennis Washburn, (Cambridge University Press, 2001)

Sanshō Dayū (Sansho the Bailiff) with Dudley Andrew, (British Film Institute, 2000 and 2020)

Myth and Masculinity in the Japanese Cinema: Towards a Political Reading of the ‘Tragic Hero’ by Isolde Standish, in Times Literary Supplement, February 11, 2001.

Ozu’s Tokyo Story by David Desser, in Monumenta Nipponica,  Vol. 53, No. 2 (Summer 1998), pp. 296-298.

Perspectives on Kurosawa, edited by James Goodwin, in Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, Vol. 15 No. 3 (August 1995),  442-3.

Reframing Japanese Cinema: Authorship, Genre, History edited by Arthur Nolletti and David Desser, Monumenta Nipponica, Vol. 50 No. 3 (Autumn, 1995) pp. 428-431.