Enclosure

As a Northern California native, living and studying in Boston, MA came as quite the shock to my system. Aside from the winters, I was most unprepared for the separation from nature and the outdoors, something so accessible to me at home. With this series I hoped to capture the claustrophobia of the built environment in which I was confined. The overwhelming textures and lack of relief in the form of sky are meant to provide the viewer a sensation of the enclosure I felt quarantined by both the urban landscape and the height of the Covid-19 Pandemic.

Take a moment in the moment.

Moving through spaces
Moving through space
Forgotten what it means to stay in one place
Perhaps it is bare
Nothing fills it but air
But how would you know
When you speed to and fro
Be patient, be static
Its beauty cannot be seen by the frantic

So often it feels as though life gets in the way; of fun, of art, of beauty. We are always worried about completing tasks and checking boxes. As cliché as it is, we are so concerned with the destination that we lose sight of the journey. These photos document instances of beauty along the way. As you look, I invite you to slow down and meditate on the minutiae of each one. Forget about what came before and detach yourself from what is coming next. Take a moment in the moment. You need it more than you know.

My goal with this series was to photograph moments of mundane beauty that go unseen by people who are too caught up in their ‘to do’ list. Specifically, I found this beauty at the intersection of light and space. There is a certain temporality to these images because of the way light changes throughout the day. You have to catch it at just the right time or else the fleeting moment will be gone. I did not wait around for these moments but instead found them as they occurred. This prevented me from lingering but at the same time forced me to slow down and take notice of my surroundings at all times. However, I’m sure there are many I missed so to you I issue this challenge – find the next one.

Window Shopping

This series was shot as an ode to Shizuka Yokomizo’s series “Dear Stranger” in which the Japanese photographer attempted to catch unsuspecting strangers in vulnerable, intimate moments through their living room windows. Finding this to be difficult, and more importantly unethical, Yokomizo modified her approach by sending letters to the homes she wished to photograph. The letters were addressed “Dear Stranger,” and asked people to open their blinds at a given time if they were willing to participate. Despite Yokomizo having the consent of her subjects', there is still something invasive about these photographs that I find to be fascinating. Amidst the coronavirus pandemic, even public spaces have an air of hostility about them, somehow less welcoming than before hence my decision to use storefronts in my parody of Yokomizo’s work. The discomfort of having your space invaded is now ever present allowing my photographs to convey a similar vulnerability to those of Yokomizo, despite lacking their exact voyeuristic nature.