I hate flowers – I paint them because they’re cheaper than models and don’t move.
Georgia O’Keeffe
In the hearty face-maskless days pre-Covid I found myself in face to face meetings about 10 times a week. Most of these meetups business oriented, with occasional dabblings, (yeah that’s right, dabblings) in dating often had me with a camera on my person. Like a gun in the Wild West, or your cup of coffee as you race out the door, a camera is always on me.
Honestly I can’t tell you how many meetings or events I’ve gone to, brought my camera, not taken a photograph of the person I came to see, made my traditional Irish Exit, and then have then seen a flower on the street and snapped that instead. Photographs are personal and often I find people uncomfortable, let alone complete strangers. Balance that with my students at Parsons walking up to complete strangers taking portraits, you’ll find me cursing the wind that I don’t have that gene.
A portrait on the street or studio is personal. There’s a level of vulnerability for both subject and creator, and I can’t hide behind the camera as much as I want to at times. So I obsess to create something that is good and pure. And once you’re in the flow, it’s giddy up time.
A photograph for me is Happiness with a capital H. I love making photographs, looking at them, and most importantly, sharing them. It’s like we as artists, or maybe just me, get to revert to our childhood and yell, “Hey you guys I made a thing and isn’t it amazing??” Now pair that feeling with anyone I’m lucky enough to capture over coffee, like finding a flower on the street, and now we too get to share in that happiness of a beautiful photograph. We’re awe struck at the final moment, not like awkward flower handoff on a first date, but as in … that’s the best coffee portrait photograph of my life.
So when we meet for lunch or coffee, I’ll bring you flowers. A bouquet of beauty in the sound of a shutter actuating and an advancing frame. The flower is you, hewn by life, and nurtured with time. And don’t worry about my dates, now I just bring a photo of flowers instead.
