Degrees

Degrees is selections of many different projects and endeavors. It is
the result of many email correspondences, phone calls, long drives,
and slow walks. It is about degrees of familiarity, separation,
comfort and intimacy. It could also be described as a failure or fear
of commitment. In having too many ideas of who and how to incorporate
similar themes there became a splintering of work. However, there is
one thing that all the projects have in common. That is an on-going
struggle and desire to understand how to work with people. I have
toyed with and tried at times to steer away from working with people,
but inevitably have always come back to the portrait. The reason
behind this seems to be that making a portrait presents many different
obstacles, each time anew. It is a collaboration between two people:
one with a camera, one without. Throughout all my smaller projects,
which have each experimented with a different level of relationship
between myself and the person they depict, I have tried to obtain and
learn how to achieve a certain level of intimacy and trust.
By interchanging medium format and 4x5 large format cameras, one
mobile and hand-held, the other rigid and cumbersome; I have tried to
capture how it is that one can interact through the lens and how it is
that we look at one another. Each person has a different relationship
to me, and to my camera. The use of either camera in any project
demonstrates the accessibility to each person that I have. When I am
granted permission, I get in closer, and when I am not, I am at a
distance. The choice of camera and of style often reflect the
emotional and physical distance between myself and the person depicted
(though not exclusively).
Not all of these attempts may have been successful, perhaps some have
definitively been unsuccessful. Yet, I keep going back and wanting to
try again, wanting to understand how this relationship can work and
create, not only a well-made photograph/portrait, but also a feeling
of connection and immediacy, no matter how slight. Some people
pictured I have known my whole life, others a few minutes. Some of
them have been the subject of my work many times before by my own
choice, others have offered themselves to me voluntarily. Each project
has dealt with specific relationships and different levels of intimacy
when it comes to the actual act of photographing. The photographs do
not attempt to label and/or typify themselves, although I suppose that
is unavoidable to an extent. What they do attempt to do is relay an
interaction: each unto themselves, and at the same time, unto each
other in relation to myself as someone with a camera. And in turn, I
ask each of them to tell me what they think, if anything, about all
this.