Xmas Day

Merry Christmas everyone!

Been thinking of why I want to make the large format portraits in Asia, what I want to say with the work. I have always had an interest in learning and understanding people, to learn of their lives, of their thoughts and feelings. I think that's the basic reason for my photos, a great curiosity and a need to try to understand.

The other part that is important to me is making a record of the subject, paying a tribute, creating a work that lives on and might be in a book or museum someday (a form of immortality for the subject). Gerry Yaum is a fiction, the subject is what's important, the work is a tribute to them. Tonight at work I am looking through a book of portraits Paul Strand made in Mexico. The people in the book lived in the 1930s, most of them are dead now but they still are kind of alive (caught in time) because of the photographs. The images are a tribute, a "forever moment" Strand gave to his subjects. That's what I want to do with my photographs make portraits that pay tribute to the lives of my subjects honestly (good, bad or anything in between) and that makes a record that will live on past our lifetime.