Lately I have been drawing again. I’ve always enjoyed the look of pen and ink drawings. There is something about the textural quality and details that I find captivating. Soon I may create collages with these drawings, perhaps like something Peter Beard or Horst Klemm would do?
Crested Guineafowl
Smallmouth Bass
Giant Trevally
Brook Trout
Tigerfish
Since being stuck at home for these last few weeks, I’m starting to get the itch to get back into a darkroom. Luckily just before this lockdown, I spent a few days printing…
I have always been fascinated by the way people move through places. Having lived in various cities around the world, I know that people commute in unique ways, which adds to a place's character. Cities are different depending on the type of transport you choose.
In this series, I photographed all these images while living in Chicago. During this time, I spent a lot of time cycling in the city and sometimes on the “L”, the elevated train transport.
While riding, you are in the city. The sights, sounds, and smells breathe life into a place. Over time, you develop an intimate knowledge of the streets. You feel the city's heartbeat because you are its veins. Like being a red blood cell moving from wherever you are to wherever you need to be. And when you look around at everyone else, they are all the same.
Stepping into a train, the city remains outside. (Especially in Chicago, where trains are warm inside.) Most of the time, you are above the streets. You get a different perspective. It's a voyeuristic experience to look at people below and into the apartments as the train rides past. I got these brief glimpses of people and places, seeing figments of unfolding stories, not knowing what happened before and after that exact moment.
The train stops. The doors open. People standing at the door walk out. New faces walk in. Some find seats. The doors close, and the train moves. It’s eternal. With this rhythm going on, all that changes are the people you share your space with. Millions of people share these confined spaces and fleeting moments daily. It makes you feel like you are doing something significant. Instead, we all are just getting around.
I photographed this project on film a long time ago while traveling through Namibia. I found these scans while going through an old hard drive. I was taken aback by how good these images looked as raw scans. There is something about analogue film’s colour depth and saturation, as well as its deeper dynamic range. More than the technical aspects of these images, I’m taken aback by what they stirred within me.
I was young then, and my brothers were children still. Almost all of our family trips were road trips. These images are a product of the monotony of the road and my daydreaming while staring through a car window. The Namib desert is a place where time has stood still. As the oldest desert on Earth and with one of the lowest human population densities, Namibia has a landscape that is seemingly unchanged and frozen in time. Human signs are ephemeral here. Footsteps last only minutes on the dunes, and all other signs will vanish, too. These photographs show a fleeting time in my life and capture memories made and forgotten in a place where time stands still.
Street photography hasn’t been my thing, but walking around and capturing images in a new city was fun. I didn’t know what to expect before arriving. While exploring the city, I began to appreciate this city's rich potential. This city and its people make me want to return with my camera ready.
