November 1 - undefined
This project, as with many creative undertakings before it, arose from melancholy. I find myself for the first time in a new city, working a job that keeps me inside from the early hours of the morning well into evening. I know few people here, and so have often gone for photo walks by myself in the evenings, a reprieve from isolation. But as the days grew short and the time changed, I realized quickly the reality of my situation - I would not see the light all week, any week. I would wake in the dark, and by the time I got off, be thrust into it once more. A photographer lives and dies by the light, so this was certainly death, was it not? Ten hours, alone at my desk, and the rest of the night, alone on my couch.
My interest in photography began as a light to follow out of the dark, and so it will be again. This project is a collection of work taken from these wanderings through the dark, some digital, some film, but all special to me. Special not in their composition, their color, their subject, but for their meaning. This project is an inward state given outward form - loneliness, aimlessness and uncertainty put forth unto something of merit. Sometimes we feel the most alone in a crowd, and even in a city of 5 million these corners of isolation exist, both within our minds and without.
A month in and this project has begun to feel like a meditation - a time to center myself, to brace against the cold, the unknown, and become whole. I have learned a few things thus far; that this is hard, tireless work, that there are no guarantees, that three hours of shooting can mean not one photo worth a shit. This may be the biggest challenge I have set for myself. Street shooting relies on subjects, an increasingly elusive sight in a pandemic as the cold closes in. The wolves of winter are coming, and I will be there to greet them.