Polaroids: Process of the Process.

These are older Polaroids taken in 2005-2006 for self-portraits I did for my graduating portfolio at the New England School of Photography. At the time I was doing this series, it was always very difficult for me to talk about the work and to really know what I wanted to say with it. I showed this series a few time within the last 2 years, either in classes I was a teacher assistant for or as a guest speaker for classes a friend of mine was teaching. It was through those showings that I was finally able to really understand the work myself, and to figure out what it meant for me.

In the end, it was simply just about being comfortable in my own skin. Whether through metaphors or the everyday mundane situations I went through, these images show the start of someone who was slowly becoming a man. There are a lot of images to this series but I thought it would be interesting to show the Polaroids for them, since these are a major part of the photographic process, I thought they would juxtapose nicely to the idea of my process as a person.

Polaroids: Chicago 2005-2008

Twenty Polaroids taken from three different visits to Chicago in 2005, 2007 and 2008. Each visit presented different kinds of monuments for me to shoot, but all relating to my own personal disconnection from my home town along with any traces I tried to dig up.

Though my recent project Learning Something New has been a new way through photography to reconnect with my past, these earlier Polaroids were an unconscious path that lead me to that idea. They lend to the concepts and visuals of my newer project, and have taught me many things along the way. Though I wouldn't quite group these Polaroids in that newer series, I would say that they represent my need for that nostalgia.

Studies in Movement: The Art of Sleeping

Six photographs of me sleeping. Started off as observations of my sleeping behaviors but turned into more of an abstract representation of that. These were taken in three different apartments over the span of two years. The exposures range from 2 to 8 hours.

Two Images of Plymouth County Hospital in Hanson, MA 2005

These two images were taken in 2005 inside Plymouth County Hospital, which use to be a tuberculosis hospital in Hanson, MA. It has been closed since 1992 and since then as been vandalized and photographed by many people. While photographing abandoned buildings is not my forte, I still find these two images to speak great depths of this place, haunting and yet peaceful.

Polaroids: Cambridge & Somerville 2005

Select images from early 2005 taken in Cambridge and Somerville.

Polaroids: Niagara Falls 2005

Four Polaroids taken during a bone chilling winter at Niagara Falls in 2005.

Short Film: A Drive Home

This is a short movie made by Filip Radazowski, Tony Jaramillo and myself. It was shot in December of 2006 all in one night and one early afternoon. I picked the soundtrack and Filip did an amazing job with the edit, though looking back we all agree it could be shortened up a bit. Maybe I can talk Filip into a shortened remix :)

drive

High School Portraits: Keep in Touch and Stay Cool.

I recently came across a "Senior Year" book that was optional to buy near the end of senior year high school. It basically ask a lot of questions about us and our friends, so that we can remember part of who we were and what was going on then. There is also a lot of room for decorating it with photos, and empty slots in the back for the nicer photos that you may not want to cut up or glue.

When looking through my Senior Book, I came across a lot of individual portraits that most of us all bought our senior year (and some junior year) to give out to family and friends. A number of them had something written on the back of them. I read a good portion of them before looking at the picture or the name signed at the bottom, to see if I could remember who may of wrote that. I only knew two of them and only because of particular things they mentioned, like the college they were going to or other people we both knew.

I became fascinated with these writings and how they basically become meaningless in the end. And maybe meaningless is a harsh word, cause I know at the time they were written they meant something. But from the past 12 years I have only remained in contact with one of them, and have recently got in contact with a few more through the convenience of Facebook.

These are 10 scans of some of those writings. I erased the signed names at the bottom, along with college names and phone numbers, to make them become less about the individual writings and more about these ideas of memory being lost, friendships and contacts becoming broken, and the question of what all of that might mean to us now.