There is a very precarious tightrope that one treads as a professional photographer in the field of Documentary and Photojournalism… It’s where on one side, there is a steep drop to a net of genuine and truthful concern, and on the other, an even steeper and much more vicious drop to the rocky spikes of congratulatory self-righteousness and false bravado.
When an “issue” concerns me, or perhaps I should say, when a particular subject strikes my interest, I seek out a way to reinterpret it both visually and poetically. Often times, I am drawn to ideas that are cultural, sociological, anthropological… I am interested in the consequences of our collective follies and the reasons behind them… Seduced by the aesthetics of modern man and the skewed value system is that largely responsible for the lopsided world we are forced to contend with today.
I photograph because I love things, am mad about things, find things funny, am overwhelmed by a pending sense of nostalgia, a need to share things and have a nod of the head in return by my peers to know that I don’t stand alone in this world feeling like this.
If I do turn my attentions to the blood that is spilt by our more hardened counterparts, militia, mercenaries, the poor and disenfranchised, it’s because I also want you to turn your attention to them. Not to me. Feeling good about how “brave” or “intrepid” or “selfless” I am for approaching such loaded issues is the last way that I want to feel. Leaves me kinda cold and dirty… like I need a bath.
Pay attention if you care. Move on if you don’t. Either way, my part is done and I can only hope that the work resonates somehow on the more forgiving drop from the tightrope.
Post Halcyon 