“when I dance you can’t catch me” selected photography 2022
I don’t know another feeling like sitting in your room on your bed staring at the wall
and an hour passes by and the room starts to get dark and you don’t get up
to turn on the light yet because it is just so nice to lay in stillness.
I can’t remember the last time I did this
but photography is the only way I can visit this when I feel like it.
Sitting and looking and touching everything you see. That is my favorite feeling.
The way that time moves across you no matter what.
I care about the way you can acknowledge that a camera is present in a situation, instead of it being an all pervasive eye.
It’s an object, a machine, you can bring things close to the camera, touch the lens, obscure things - or you can choose to acknowledge it,
and stare right into its apparatus.
Because of this, in this work, all the people I’m photographing are photographers or artists too.
They are performers in this conversation we have together as we shoot.
I direct them minimally, often in a way of saying ‘wait stay right where you are’ . Then I say, look here, as I put my hand past the lens.
I show them the photos I love as we take them, they get excited about being part of the process.
Photographers who pose for a photo have a secret idea of how things will look behind the camera while they are still in front of it
I think
I have been thinking about the way photographs I looked at as a teenager made me feel. Images I saw of
girls and young people and queer people,
by girls and young people and queer people.
They were important to see. They felt like photography wasn’t with
a capital P and that art didn’t have to be perfect
and shiny.
They taught me that there are important moments in life you touched as you lived it, you could choose to tell your own stories,
and use this to refuse the many things you are expected to be.
I think about how many images exist in the world - millions of stock images and
terrible nature photography and
ethno-graphic documents and photo bros -
but on my small computer screen I could see a portal back to something that really mattered to me.
And then I remember that all the world wants to do is
sell us photos of young people.
So I wonder if there
is ever a way to be seen on your own terms -
as a performer circling the machine that is trying to make
sense of you.
To be small and scream back, and
refuse to be captured.
This is the way we made these portraits together,
The way their turned heads are refusing the viewers
gaze, the way their shoulders are vibrating, the way
you cannot seem to hold them still.
You can’t hold them
they are full bleed into the page
they are pushing in from the outside
and an hour passes by and the room starts to get dark and you don’t get up
to turn on the light yet because it is just so nice to lay in stillness.
I can’t remember the last time I did this
but photography is the only way I can visit this when I feel like it.
Sitting and looking and touching everything you see. That is my favorite feeling.
The way that time moves across you no matter what.
I care about the way you can acknowledge that a camera is present in a situation, instead of it being an all pervasive eye.
It’s an object, a machine, you can bring things close to the camera, touch the lens, obscure things - or you can choose to acknowledge it,
and stare right into its apparatus.
Because of this, in this work, all the people I’m photographing are photographers or artists too.
They are performers in this conversation we have together as we shoot.
I direct them minimally, often in a way of saying ‘wait stay right where you are’ . Then I say, look here, as I put my hand past the lens.
I show them the photos I love as we take them, they get excited about being part of the process.
Photographers who pose for a photo have a secret idea of how things will look behind the camera while they are still in front of it
I think
I have been thinking about the way photographs I looked at as a teenager made me feel. Images I saw of
girls and young people and queer people,
by girls and young people and queer people.
They were important to see. They felt like photography wasn’t with
a capital P and that art didn’t have to be perfect
and shiny.
They taught me that there are important moments in life you touched as you lived it, you could choose to tell your own stories,
and use this to refuse the many things you are expected to be.
I think about how many images exist in the world - millions of stock images and
terrible nature photography and
ethno-graphic documents and photo bros -
but on my small computer screen I could see a portal back to something that really mattered to me.
And then I remember that all the world wants to do is
sell us photos of young people.
So I wonder if there
is ever a way to be seen on your own terms -
as a performer circling the machine that is trying to make
sense of you.
To be small and scream back, and
refuse to be captured.
This is the way we made these portraits together,
The way their turned heads are refusing the viewers
gaze, the way their shoulders are vibrating, the way
you cannot seem to hold them still.
You can’t hold them
they are full bleed into the page
they are pushing in from the outside