“I spill my guts, she captures and reflects back to me who I am. That’s what we do.”- Lacey
I wanted to make some portraits with lace. My desire made me forget how on-the-nose that was= her name is Lacey.
The purpose of expectations is to get us there. Conner Habib said it best when he said that ultimately we don’t know who we’re going to be when we arrive in the place we wanted to go.
Getting there changes us and what happens to the thought that brought us there? What’s that? What does the carrot dangle of ideas and expectations serve?
Expectation lures us to wherever/whatever awaits us. Like a weird premonition.
The thought, the impulse, the light or lace, this film- what will it become. Lures.
These are not the lace photos of Lacey I had in my mind. Nothing close. Those images are still mine, in my mind. They belong to that realm. They’ll never alive out here, in the world whether digital or analogue.
The inspiration doesn’t exist except as a siren song. And that’s real, maybe the most real.
99% of my 5 year film shooting journey I’ve worked soooooo slowly.
I shot slow for $ reasons, to explore quality over quantity, intentionality, etc but over the years my methods started to crystalize, even as my fluency with the medium improved. When I got the Pentax 645n (automatic focus/automatic settings) I knew immediately that I could shoot so much more, so much faster. And I wanted to. And wanting is sacred.
When I started transitioning from shooting digital to shooting film I did it because film, sure but I did it to wipe a slate of habit and reflex. For me, film was about “noticing”, “intention/attention” and in my mind that meant working slow? And sure serves something but I started creating absolutes and rituals that made a kind of caricature out of my process.
That day, more than anything, more than lace or any image or medium or film stock: I wanted to shoot fast. I wanted to feel response and connection uninhibited by thoughts of settings or intentionality. To see movement, to move.
“Lacey, get close, move around.”
It took 2 minutes to shoot 16 frames and I let myself shoot at the pace of feeling.
And I brok
