Being True To Oneself

  On this chilly rainy day I stayed inside and went through my photo dump of New York City shot in 2015-2017. It didn't take me long to fortify my recent feelings that I have not been true to myself. That seven years ago I tried to transform myself into a different kind of photographer. One that was more simpler to understand, more mainstream, more academic. In the process I lost the world I created and any emotion and feeling that went along with it. But that's no longer the case.

  Over the course of this year I will continue to return to my former self. And if I were still a young photographer in his 20s or early 30s I would destroy all my work that didn't fit within the definition of myself as a photographer. But too much of what I've photographed no longer exists so there's no chance of me reshooting it.

  I have no interest in the masses being interested, liking or even understanding my photography. They are a collective of contemporary clones, unable to allow an individualistic thought to enter their heads.

 Over the last decade I've become nauseated at the safe, boring, and down right insulting photography exhibitions being installed at galleries and museums. Amplifying this insult is exhibiting large photographic prints of boring photos. Pssst, curators, boring photos do not get better with size, no matter what you were told in art school.

 So getting back to today, while searching through a couple thousand photos of New York City at night I began to actually feel happy at what I was seeing. The solitude and dark world returning to me, and it was more than a happy feeling, it was all my senses coming alive. There is absolutely no better place to be than in a city with eight million people on a cold and rainy night, with most tucked safely home in bed, leaving the sidewalk all to you. There is a quiet power to that feeling.

Outtakes from my "Lonely New York" project.