Gleaming the cube, Los Angeles 2019

I fell in love with the works of Ai WeiWei over the course of last year.  I was late to the party–something that my friend Tim was more than eager to point out.  I hadn’t seen Disposition and when I saw Forever, photographing both the piece and the people viewing it, I didn’t have any idea of whom it’s creator was.  When I started reading about the trio of shows he was having in Los Angeles I made sure to make it to all three and I made this image at the Zodiac show.  

The works were staggering.  While I took it all in, looking for my images of people taking it all in, I felt suddenly brow-beaten.  Looking at these amazing pieces, sweaty and gleaming with a creativity which could only be divine intervention and wrought into being by hands which absolutely have six fingers each, it was hard to not focus a little bit inward.  

When I passed the Chrystal Cube, I stopped cold.  Then after a minute of just standing there, gazing into this incredible object there came a moment of clarity. I had a small chuckle, moved the camera to my eye and made the image above.  It was almost like Ai Weiwei was speaking directly to me in that exact moment–showing me how my reality was being distorted and the perception of what is perfection is not a reflection of me but of my wantonness of something that is simply an illusion–an ideal that no one achieves.

Gleaming the cube, shot on my Mamiya6MF on Kodak Tri-X, pushed +2 at the Icon. 

When I saw this wall of sketches by Jesper Waldersten at Fotografiska in Stockholm I was completely in awe of the dedication it takes to ones art to make sketch after sketch after sketch, searching desperately for that spark—for that connection to a feeling that goes as quickly as it comes. Even more incredible was that in creating these iterations, Walderstens’ process transcended it’s individual content and in my mind actually became the art—at least for me, no single sketch was the focus. The derivative of the combined hours spent toiling over paper searching for the allusive thread tying the vision together become the manic center of it all. The process becomes the art when you see it in It’s entirety. It though of all my sheets of negative in binders and how a wall of them printed would look. Before the moment lapsed I made this image to remind me of that the process can be both the journey and the result—that the derivative matters and that the hours count.

The process, Sthlm 2019

A moment of Reflection, Los Angeles 2018

I’ve been away too long.  I have written or processed any work in what feels like forever.  Well that’s about to change.  For my birthday my lovely wife processed out 25 or so of my medium format rolls and I spent the better part of the summer scanning them whenever I had a chance.  Today I made a few selects and I feel like I may finally be back. Only time will tell of course but I need this now, maybe more than ever and I have so many images and stories to share.  So let’s pick up where we left off, dear reader and purveyor of street photography.  Let’s see what we can see—Now, where were we?

Shot on my Mamiya 6MF on Kodak Tri-X film push processed by the Icon and gifted by my lovely wife.