Raw From The Road, March 2, 2017
Four Dark Months in Brooklyn
In 2002, I gave up my very stable job at USC, sold my car and loaded up my sweet dog, Shea, to drive back east where I was engaged to get married and start a new life.
That never happened.
What did happen was that in result of a very abusive relationship, I turned to photography.
A year before, I bought my first 35mm camera and traveled alone to Spain, hoping to practice the language and document my trip. I documented my trip, but the Spanish that is spoken
in Barcelona is not the Spanish I studied.
I didn’t practice a lot of Spanish…
Instead, I studied architecture, composition and contrast.
I brought 12 rolls of film, six color and six black and white and used every single one.
Spain marked the beginning of my love affair with photography.
Hyperspace back to Brooklyn.
While in Brooklyn, I enrolled in an English class at NYU as a visiting student.
I was particularly drawn to photographing with black and white film and it wasn’t long before I became a regular at the processing store, ‘coincidentally’ located down the street,
dropping off rolls of film, picking up contact sheets on a pretty steady basis.
When things got bad enough for me to leave, I loaded up my car, my dog, my things and high-tailed it back to California where I went back to school and took my first class in photography.
Several months later, with the support of dear friends, I had my very first photography show at a trendy hair salon in Santa Monica, CA.
I had several pieces printed on fiber paper.
Taking photographs was my refuge and bringing them to the film processing store was my salvation.
It was from this experience that I created the series “Four Dark Months in Brookyln.”
