Allentown is one of Buffalo’s most colorful neighborhoods. It his home to more than 700 historic buildings, and is known for its artists, shops, restaurants and nightlife. I photographed this 150-year-old Allentown wall, bearing but a single window and a decorated with a contemporary splash of graffiti. It is an exercise in color, texture, and contrasts – a scene bearing both the mark of time and a mark of self-expression.

This huge wall advertisement featuring a slumbering lion is gradually vanishing. It is peeling away, revealing the brick façade of a 19th century building beneath it. My photograph draws on symbolism to tell its story. This lion, the ‘King of Beasts,” has lost its majesty. Time and weather have taken their toll, and incongruously doomed this most powerful of creatures.

This hall leads to the world’s leading collection of photography and film, as well as the mansion that Kodak founder George Eastman, the founder of modern photography, called home from 1905 to 1932.

I combine three elements to tell my story here, starting with a display containing a massive portrait of Eastman as a young man on the left hand side of my image. He contrasts in scale, gender, and era to a visitor at right who is about to walk past his photograph. Behind her head, a large projected photograph of a yellow dandelion explodes upon a screen, making it seem as if she may have photography on her mind. Eastman does not seem to see her, nor does she look at him. If he could see her, his eyes might well be drawn to her bright blue shoes that offer a touch of visual incongruity to this image.

While visiting with family in Cazenovia, just outside of Syracuse, I discovered the remains of an old cemetery lost amidst an overgrown hilltop at the edge of a cornfield. Most of its headstones had toppled over time, vanishing beneath the heavy brush that covered the hill. Yet this headstone has somehow remained upright, although the weeds around had grown so high that much of it was obscured. I photograph it as an abstraction, a reminder that nature ultimately reclaims everything. We do not even who is buried here – all is left to our imagination

Auburn’s historic downtown district is lined with ornate lampposts that are well over 100 years old. Most of them fly the American flag during the summer. The morning light was warm and rich, emphasizing the bright green paint on the metal post. The branches from two different trees enter the frame from both sides, rhythmically echoing the delicate twin light fixtures atop the post. The flag moves from the shadows into the light. Meanwhile, an oddly patterned wall of the building in the background ties everything together. It appears weathered and stained, as if it has been part of this scene for a century or more.

The Liberty Store Mural, by Anthony P. Clubine, covers the entire ground level façade of a local retail store. Six life-sized shoppers are painted into the scene. The warm morning light and its shadows reminded me of the mood of an Edward Hopper painting, as I waited for an actual pedestrian to move down the sidewalk in front of it. Eventually a woman entered the frame, and as she reached the faux door in the middle of the scene, I made this image. She seems to vanish into Clubine's mural because she is the nearly same size as most of the painted figures. Her presence in this photograph defines my purpose in making it – to express art as an imitation of life. Anthony Clubine leaves a comment below -- he says that the people depicted in this mural represent "famous Auburn residents." Both he and I are essentially expressing similar ideas. Clubine uses local celebrities to inhabit the mural and bring art to life. By using an actual city building as a canvas for his mural, Clubine is also using art to imitate life here.