About Weeds

New Yorkers are known for being walkers: fast-paced, destination-driven, somewhat impatient.  I am probably all of those at various times. But I am also a different kind of New York walker. I often walk slowly, stopping at construction sites, garbage heaps or defaced structures searching for crumpled walls, peeling paint or discarded objects. I like to look at the distressed, ordinary things that often go unnoticed to find the small, humble gems in the unsightly mess. 

The first part of this process is fortuitous.  As I walk,  I look around until something messy catches my eye. And then it becomes more intentional. Through the camera’s viewfinder I can look at things closely, zoom in and isolate small parts of the whole. Sometimes, what I see has a painterly quality or the peelings of paper or paint create artistic compositions. Sometimes a different texture or material is revealed from behind -  a piece of the past peeking out. At other times, nothing happens at all. So I move on.

Much like the hard-to-define concept of wabi-sabi, I find new ways to look at the imperfect or the impermanent. Where others might look away, I look closer, knowing that what is there today may not be there tomorrow. And knowing that, depending on how you look at things, they can take on new qualities. The camera allows me to preserve these transient moments.

These images are the takeaways of an ongoing treasure hunt. I enjoy walking and looking - and maybe finding a surprise.