TEXTURED

This project began with a moment of reflection: 12 full archive boxes of film photos, shot since middle school in 2013. Starting with my mom's Olympus OM-2, I've since worked through 20+ film cameras, ranging from 35mm to 4x5. Through all of it, one thing stood out. The Texture.

When photographers talk about why they shoot film, it's usually about the "nostalgic feeling," and to a certain degree, I understand that. For me, it's the way an image exposes onto gelatin, something I've never seen a digital camera replicate. It might not matter to most people, but when you capture images for a living, it's something you notice right away.

This realization came to me while flipping through the archive boxes, and two images sparked an idea I didn't fully understand yet.

Catalyst 1 & 2

I rarely get light leaks, but when I do, they become the most interesting thing to me. This ended up being a 32-year-old roll of Fuji Velvia 50 that had its wrapper taken off, allowing the dots from the backing paper to appear on the film. Additionally, it was cross-processed, giving it interesting color and shape. I started to wonder if I could use this happy accident for future projects.

While living in Brooklyn, I became infatuated with tags and graffiti, mainly because they were always painted on extremely textured surfaces. At the time, I was working as a fine art printer, where the most texture we could get was through rag paper or an alternative process. Then I noticed the texture was already prominent in this negative. A basic print test confirmed it, a way to feel the texture just by looking at the image.

I started by shooting texture wherever I could find it, walls, floors, anything with enough surface to catch light differently.

But eventually I kept coming back to graffiti. It wasn't just texture anymore, it was texture with history on it. Underneath the paint is still brick, still concrete, still whatever NYC was built out of. The tags are just the most recent layer.

The culture is the paint. It's always changing. But the texture is the foundation it's built on.