It’s one thing to make a picture of what a person looks like, it’s another thing to make a portrait of who they are.” – Paul Caponigro

I love portraits. They’ve always been my favorite genre of photography. I love the power of a portrait has to connect a viewer to the subject, to bring the viewer to the subject’s place and time, to allow insight into their person and identity. There’s a unique magic in Julia Margaret Cameron’s King Lear, a palpable ephemerality to Warhol’s Polaroids, elements born of that unique moment with their subjects. Because of this, my work is founded on the subject’s active role in its creation.

Richard Avedon said “A photographic portrait is a picture of someone who knows he’s being photographed, and what he does with this knowledge is as much a part of the photograph as what he’s wearing or how he looks. He’s implicated in what’s happened, and he has a certain real power over the result.” Portraiture is a collaborative endeavor and the subject’s participation is for me one of the most compelling and valuable elements of the creative process. Even the titles of my work reflect this as I include the subject’s name in each photograph’s title whenever possible (unless they wish it withheld).¹

Every one of my projects has this collaboration at its core because that is what allows the fullest exploration of the themes of identity, personality, and personhood. From the more explicit in situ settings and interviews of City Upon a Hill or the ‘improv prompt’ back-and-forth of Curtain Calls, to the more implicit expressions of emotional response within Color Theory and Life in Monochrome, as photographer I strive to serve both as the author of my own creative vision and the conduit through which the subject can communicate themselves to the viewer.

1. I began this practice, including revising the titles of previous works, in response to the excellent Collaboration A Potential History of Photography by Ariella Aïsha Azoulay, Wendy Ewald, Susan Meiselas, Leigh Raiford, Laura Wexler and the associated exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Photography curated by Ewald, Meiselas, Wexler, and Kristin Taylor. ↩︎