For years I dismissed the idea of a personal website. A website devoted to my photography seemed, at first glance, like a somewhat plaintive piece of self-promotion. Did I need such self-promotion? I’ve won a few awards, my photographs have been published in books and magazines and exhibited in galleries and museums, and I’ve even spent some time talking about my life on the radio. Why would I need a website? What would cyberspace offer me that I’m not getting on earth?

The answer is personal and it has to do with why I became an artist in the first place.

My original intention was to share the almost scandalous joy I experienced when I began to take photographs. The key word here is "share" - for who more than the artist feels that sanity depends upon this act of sharing? Artists are often angry and live apart, but their need to "connect" to other men and women is inseparable from their creativity.

How odd, then, that after years of exhibiting, I now find myself at a greater distance from my audience than ever before. Why is this?

The fact is, there is a certain solitariness (amounting almost to isolation) which is built into the photographer’s life. As time goes by, a few hundred negatives, which need tending, become a few thousand; portfolios enlarge; photographs that are sold need to be replaced, and of course new photographs claim time and attention. This is solitary work that is mostly accomplished in very dark rooms, and, to be honest, there are times when it seems as if the minor pleasures of maintenance have become the fundamental reason for the work. This is troubling.

A website will never replace the gallery world where actual images are visible in their luminous unpixelated shape, but it does offer a quiet alternative space where photographs can be viewed thoughtfully - either as distinct images or as part of a larger, historical continuity. Photographs which are routinely stored in boxes are transported into cyber space where they can be shared with other people - a new form of invigoration. And this is agreeable. Moreover, a website is inherently democratic. You don’t have to receive an invitation to go there, or dress up, or pay an admission fee, or nibble broccoli florets. All you have to is look. If you like the photographs, you’ll stick around for awhile; if not, you’re gone in less than a second.

That sounds just about right to me.