Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, he has functioned as a photographer, curator and visual archivist for the past 30 years. Much of his research is an examination of the cultural landscape in rural and urban African American communities and the visual traces of the migration between the two. His photography and archival work has been exhibited, published and collected widely. He is co-author of Harlem of the West, The San Francisco Fillmore Jazz Era, Chronicle Books 2006 which traces the history of the cultural life of the Fillmore District from 1941-1968 using found photographs and oral histories from this thriving African American community that was destroyed by urban renewal.