The story…

It is a conflict as old as philosophy itself—the war between the practicalities of earning a living and the more fanciful, deeper longings of our souls.

Over time different words have been used to describe the struggle. Logic vs. love. Head vs. heart. Yet, regardless of the words used, the conflict is the same. It is the struggle between the solid structure of reason and the more amorphous world of passion. And, it is a conflict that has been present for me during the entirety of my legal career.

Over the years I have pursued many artistic undertakings—photography chief among them. These pursuits have led to a certain fascination with lawyers who are also artists...lawyers for whom the outer world of structure, reason and orderliness converge with an inner world of passion, soul and creativity. The disparity between these two worlds raises several questions. Is it possible for the lawyer mind and artist mind to coexist? How does one learn to move seamlessly between these two worlds? More significantly, can a seamless convergence of these two worlds make us better lawyers and healthier human beings?

My photographs are an effort to confront these questions, and a recognition that one does not have to choose between the two worlds. All the lawyer-artists I have photographed bring the best parts of their lawyer-selves to their craft—discipline, structure, symmetry. But they also bring more—a longing for the soulfulness that exists when something beautiful is being created. It is that soulfulness I have strived to capture in these photographs.

A collection of fifteen large prints from this project will be on display at the upcoming South Carolina Bar Convention, in Columbia, South Carolina.