If you knew me back in college (Brooks, holla), you have probably seen these images before. I was lucky enough to have a few end up in the permanent collection at Brooks' permanent collection-Gallery 22. However, shortly after I graduated, I took some really bad advice from some people in the industry and removed my fine art work from my professional website. "It doesn't flow", they said. "You have to show people you are really good at one or two commercial things, and that's it", others said. In hindsight I say that it was bad advice because I can't tell you how many art directors, editors, clients, and other photography enthusiasts have specifically asked if I do any fine art work and mentioned how much they value seeing a commercial photographer's creative side.
So, after hearing this request for the tenth time, I dug out all my old negatives, borrowed a flatbed scanner, and have been held up in my apartment re-scanning those images to go back up on my website and eventually to be sold as prints on Etsy and Alamy. Hopefully the undertaking is worth it. Hopefully you find your own truth and meaning in these images the way that I find my own in them.
They are perfectly imperfect to me. I spend so much time trying to make things perfect in the commercial world, and I love my Holga because it encourages happy accidents, mistakes, and sheer luck. Shooting film with this little plastic camera (that most people stop and ask me if it is a freaking Fisher Price toy) is the most freeing and rewarding thing I can do for my photography soul. It gives me so much joy to just let go and let things happen. To go back to the basics. To have extremely few controls over my camera, and just make the most of it. Because it's just a giant metaphor for life in my eyes. We have very little control over the cards we are dealt, but we can still use them to create something beautiful.
