Essays
- ESSAYDECEMBER 20, 2025
Review: Hell Bent by These Days Gallery
The following is a write up of what I had expressed with Jodi of These Days LA, for tripadvisor.com (the go to internet space for itinerate thrill seekers).
... on a sort of whim fostered by Jodi’s enthusiasm, I purchased "Hell Bent", compiled and published through These Days, which is a collection of images and email correspondence between the photographers, Miron Zownir in Berlin, and Scot Sothern in Los Angeles. In these correspondences Zownir and Sothern exchange some anticipated pleasantries, their influences, and discuss arrangements for sharing prints of their work with each other. They also discuss their relationship to “compromising”, Zownir commenting at one point, “…but still I must say I’ve met more cowards in the cultural establishment than brave ones."
- ESSAYNOVEMBER 24, 2025
Notes from Hollywood and Vine
A lawn chair and a typewriter at the heart of Hollywood at 6am. These are the notes.
Is this Hollywood? I see the pink granite stars embedded within the sidewalk. I see the neon sign beckoning bygone eras. Veiled allusions to cinema and culture, the seemingly still heartbeat of times past.
- ESSAYJUNE 21, 2025
Ordinary Beauty
Published in ARTBAR, issue 001. The story of how photography, specifically film helped me through one of the most difficult years of my life, just by encouraging me to take little walks, and notice the beauty in light and shadow.
I've spent a lifetime trying to be whatever I believed would allow me to feel like I belonged. The rejections of my youth could only amount to catastrophic realizations that, although I may have worn the right clothes, listened to the right music, and said the right words, I never felt as though I were accepted. The only conclusion I could have made in my adolescence might be that it's simply me they didn't like. At 36 years old, I feel I found belonging, and yet there is no one else here. It's Christmas Day 2024, and 363 days ago I left an emotionally abusive and volatile relationship. Today I sit alone in an apartment I've sublet from a friend and mentor, with dirty dishes in the sink. These last 363 days have done many things, and most have been extremely difficult; I endured the cruelty of an emotionally destructive woman performing reasonably well at the "top-rated program in the US" at the "top-rated public university", I lost two friends to suicide. I cultivated intimate friendships, and, for once, I felt all of these big things, truly felt them. I chose to look towards rather than away from the discomfort of the past year, and as far as this essay is concerned, I cultivated a deep relationship to my art and my photography through which I found a deep relationship to self.
- ESSAYMARCH 18, 2025
I Dare You to Stay Awake: The Clown, The Rat, and The Cabaret
An unpleasant story from Sunset Boulevard
The rat in this image is dying, I knew it was, and you should too. It won’t change the story to know why this rat was in the middle of the sidewalk on Sunset Boulevard, bleeding from the ear, struggling to breathe – and besides, I merely stumbled up on the rodent in the state we see here. While walking down Sunset, in East Hollywood, three mechanics of the Valvoline Instant Oil Change were standing at the top of the ramp leading to the store’s office. One of them raised an urgent hand toward me as I approached, warning, “Watch out, there’s a big rat on the sidewalk”. Looking down at the sidewalk the struggling rat made my heart twist, it was a scene of suffering (a very human interpretation). Was it this rat’s good fortune for its last moments to be in full view of four humans that even possessed this capacity to decide on its behalf whether what it was experiencing was in fact suffering, or not? -------------------------------- [FULL STORY IN THE SPRING ISSUE OF ARTBAR MAGAZINE]