Second homes

I was recently asked to submit photographs to Das Magazin on “my” New York. The raucous cacophony that I pass through like a tiny tornado whenever my travel schedule will allow me. The enormity that I navigate filled with its beauty, crazy, concrete angles and deep rumbling underbelly. I feel lucky to call it a home… albeit a second one…

Interludes

Small spaces open up to me where a certain time and a certain few people make a brief interlude in my life. The beginning of this summer has been one such time. My glorious little household in New York has been scattered to the four winds – Barbara to Croatia, Talia back up the Russian River in California and I continue my search for answers to questions that I don’t understand, across oceans and continents. Adrienne stays in New York and laments our desertion. I make Barbara and Talia promise to return whenever I make my forays back into the city. Every great album needs interludes.

Last nights together in the city.

New York | July, 2011

Road trip journaling

Slide out of the city on those hot, sticky wheels. Grey ribbon of road and a blue sky so bright it seems white. Throw your head back and howl at the freedom of a horizon unencumbered. Marvel at the little things, the perfect mathematics of cumulus clouds and wheat. Bare your skin to the sun and be lost for a while in a place that doesn’t belong to you. Fall exhausted in a heap at the end.

Let night come

Let night come
with its austere grandeur,
ancient superstitions and fears.
It can do us no harm.
We’ll put some music on,
open the curtains, let things darken
as they will.

~ excerpt from “Here and Now” by Stephen Dunn

Union Square | NYC

Make-believe

Legs piston-pumping through the opaque heat of a New York summer. I blink through the veil of sweat and wonder briefly at your life, carrying on, evolving, happening without me. So firmly held prisoner and apart by our own skins, continents, the sea, promises we made before we knew each other.

I whistle something tuneless that catches on the breeze and it whips past me to the rider on my right. She is an old friend, lost in her own biking thoughts, one eye turned inward and the other on passing cars and strangers.

I swerve simmering asphalt potholes, look up, note a passing plane, fancy outrunning it to Chelsea and grin at my own foolish games of make-believe. Finally making my darting way home through the constant obstacle course of big city traffic, I wonder if you ever conjure up my life happening over here without you.

Hot blind earth

I feel like a wet seed wild in the hot blind earth.

William Faulkner

Spring, New York | USA

In two days…

… I shall be on the road again, slowly making my way back to Home #2. It’s been 6 months since I’ve cruised down the concrete ribbon pavements of Manhattan on my wiry, 2-wheeled crimson steed. I miss it. The clamour of the city beating on my window, the madness of my friends, the photography community – ever vibrant, ever comical, ever passionate.

In two days, I’ll be firmly ensconced within the ill-fitting polyester seats of a giant airborne vessel, en route to Singapore with enough time for one swim, one meeting and one night of blathering away with a close and very funny Brian. 30 hours later, another check-in, en route to Roma Fiumicino, six days of intensified Reflexions Masterclass before boarding one last flight to arrive in the fabled arms of my hard and dirty love, New York.

Two days from now, 30 hours of air time, 6 plane snacks and one week of photo-talk later, I’ll be at Home #2 again, stale, weary, excited with a head full of crits and a tune on my lips…

How it ends

My pieces of 2010.

Some video, some stop-motion, some slideshow, some highs, some lows, some revelations:

ICP and beyond – My year at the International Centre of Photography, New  York

Pre-Games – When friends come over for the party before the party

In the early AM – Heading downtown in a cab, late one night/early one morning with Ling

Sneak peek – A cracked window on how I like to “work”

Escape to Fort Myers – Brief respite from New York in Florida

Insomnia – No sleep in April

Loss – I lost someone

Getting personal – Understanding what it means to be separate

From England to Australia – Journeying away on wobbly post-ICP legs

x Ying + Ling

 

Going places

It’s become a different beast for me, being on the move, going places. It used to be this embarkation to some mysterious unknown, or thoughtful homecoming, one of the two. Now the idea of home is a strange creature. At once less familiar and more amorphous. Old faces that grew older when I wasn’t looking. Grey hairs, smile lines, deeper from events that I wasn’t around to witness. Friends weaving through the cyclical landmine of love and heartbreak, I stop just in time to see the blur of the revolving door of girlfriends and boyfriends, never really around long enough for me to really get to know them, or them me. Maybe I’ll make it to the wedding, maybe not. Maybe I’m getting tired of being on the move so much, living the half life. Getting to know you, part time.

Preparations

Hello? Did you hear me when I called? Seemed like you did… when you turned your head so slightly, ear caught to the wind at the sound of my voice and your name. Perhaps you thought it was a mistake. Perhaps you thought that I was calling to another. Well I wasn’t. It was always you… I just veiled my threats with the possibility of others. I never meant to hurt you.

The rain keeps coming. Fall gives way to the cold clutch of winter. I prepare to head south.