On Transience

Recently, we took a trip to the coast. After driving 600+ miles, I carried myself to the waters edge. But I had interrupted a scene. Two shorebirds had been busily working their way up the beach. They had been jauntily mining the sand for food, as they do, and I had intersected their path. I, meaning no harm, stayed still and tried to project benevolence. Sidelong I watched the lead bird battle between impatience and suspicion. I reflected on how common that struggle was. It was an ideal moment. One foot moved forward, then back. A hesitant half body turn, then the other foot forward, then back. The second bird cannily stayed behind and waited for it’s companion to decide on a course of action. I soaked up that, and the sun, for a few minutes, then slowly and passively I retreated. The birds patiently continued their way up the beach and out of this story.

The quiet tension of that transient moment was alive in a singular way and serves as an analogy to what I tried to capture with my camera. Prior to becoming an architect, photography was my primary passion, and an outlet for my restlessness and perfectionism. None of the scenes depicted were staged by myself. Rather, my interest was in discovering latent narratives, finding inexplicable scenes that lead one to infer meaning. So every scene was as I found it, leaving one to wonder about who, or how, it came to be. Some of the pictures are the recording of an ideal moment, made timeless by the chance intersection of myself, the subject, the time, the position of light. Sometimes the subject was a scene that invoked a memory, something about it resonating with some divine nostalgia. What interested me about film photography was that it captured truth, providing an honest record that I was there, then. 

All black and white photographs herein were captured on film, in 35mm, 6x4.5cm, 6x6cm, 6x9cm, and 4x5in formats, and were printed on gelatin silver fiber based paper with selenium toning. The silver prints were scanned digitally, and were not Photoshopped except for spot retouching. The few color pictures are either digital photographs, or 6x6cm positives.

Prints available upon request