One Finger on the Button, Two Fingers Crossed

NOUN, my first photo exhibition, opens Saturday night. Here's what Photography has meant for me.

Hey, I’d love to invite you out to the opening of my first solo photography exhibition this Saturday night, February 10, 2024, at Long Story Short Gallery here in Los Angeles. It’s called NOUN (a person, place, or thing) because I believe life is enriched by people first, places second, and things last. Over the last 30 years, my photography has seemed to follow this blueprint.

My first big boy camera was a 35mm SLR – the Nikon 8008s -- that I found in the back of my dad’s closet in high school while I was snooping around for oversized khakis. At some point in his prequel life, my dad was a hobbyist and had accumulated a moving box full of manual cameras – what would today be classified as vintage Nikons and Fujifilms. I still remember the strong smells of aged leather and steel, permeated with the oils of trigger fingers and summer sweat. The 8008s was a state-of-the-art camera in the 1990s and my dad had bought it to shoot us on road trips. Without his permission, I tucked it into my Jansport and met up with my friends to skate.

My friend Zach Cordner was five steps ahead of me. Amongst our crew, he was the budding photographer. Zach had a command of F-stops and fill-flashes and was already shooting for print publications (he eventually became a professional photographer). So, I followed in his footsteps and learned the ropes. I shot local skate demos and live punk shows. I loved how close and intimate I could get to the action while maintaining a clinical distance. Every moment was historic, every photograph capturing an unfolding story. It was like getting to walk through a movie as it played out in real time.

Later, during the blog years of The Hundreds, I not only wanted to document history, but I wanted to write it as well. Streetwear was so electric in the 2000s, it was coming together so fast, that it was as if digital SLRs and Lightroom were designed for the occasion. Photography was an art, but it was also a tool to disseminate information, like a printing press. Eventually smartphone cameras and social media were best suited for this type of gonzo journalism, but there was this magical period where bloggers ruled the world. As storytellers, our pictures were paragraphs, thoughtful and composed. And there were a short few years there where our photos dictated the narrative…

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