Revelation: The thing that surprises me the most about my art is how little I surprise myself. Terrible revelation, I know. I’m in the process of fixing that. In a few weeks I’ll be locking myself in a house to experimentally create the darkest art I can. And, a few days ago, I challenged myself to stop caring so much about what comes out of my photo shoots. I took my Instax Mini camera out and shot with instant film,…
Has anyone ever told you that you can’t do something you want to do? Or that you shouldn’t, or that it’s best not to? This past week I had an idea to make myself look like I was covered in tree sap while hanging upside down from the most epic tree I’ve ever seen. In order to do that, I had to cover myself in molasses…or, as it ended up turning out, corn syrup. On a micro level, there were…
I often feel that art is most interesting when it is most inconvenient; when you have no money, no location, nothing to spruce it up. It really comes from inside then instead of relying on the objects around to fill the frame. When you create from nothing, you create from within. As so many of us do, my journey into photography began when I had little resources other than a camera. I had no money, no locations, no props except…
I think that we have an innate desire to put our stamp on things, whether that is as a person, as an artist, or something else. In my years of teaching photography, I’ve never once conducted a workshop in which no one asked how to build a recognizable style. I’ve asked myself that question plenty of times. It is a beautiful thing to look at someone’s work and know, without looking at the name, who made it. Those are my…
Last May I thought I had finished writing a novel. I wrote 80,000 words, sent it off to my friend Ksenia who edited it for me, and what I received back was a lot of red and feedback that I hadn’t properly written a book…just a summary of a book. And man, was she spot on. That launched me into the most splendid year ever. I have always valued books and writing above most other things, but truth be told,…