A young family ascends the stairs of a Long Island City, NY subway stop. 12.27.18
The photo in the subway happened faster than I could think, a split second impulse in a life defined by impulsivity. This tendency lends itself well to photography. But in other places it can lead to a negative response. Enough negative feedback over time and you begin to build up a defensive mechanism: avoidance.
I was always anxious, longing for connection in an alien world. But at first it was an avoidant style of attachment. Mostly I existed as a wallflower, observing others on the periphery of their lives. Get too close to the fire and you might get burned. The anxiety pulls you away from the dancing fire light even as it dazzles and attracts you.
Municipal police cars burn during a riot in Columbia, SC. 05.30.20
At a photo conference in March 2020, I was showing a set of photographs to a well known photo editor. I remember he remarked that I shot everything at a distance. He said he could tell I was anxious when I made the photos, that I was shooting scared and I needed to find my courage.
The photographer and cofounder of the legendary Magnum Photos, Robert Capa, is famous for saying “If your pictures aren’t good enough, you aren’t close enough.” He would later step on a landmine in Vietnam trying to get closer to the French Foreign Legion.
Syrian refugee children in a rudimentary flat in Reyhanlı, Turkey. 10.02.13
But he’s right, the closer you are the more intimate and emotional the photos. We are intensely emotional creatures craving intimacy and when we struggle with those things it can feel as wounding as Capa’s landmine. Our insecurities make it hard for many of us to navigate the social minefield. Releasing ourselves from the burden of those insecurities and forgiving ourselves for our imperfections brings us out of the danger zone and back to the healing warmth of the fire.
The photo conference happened to coincide with the opening salvos of the great Covid-19 pandemic. I left with a sense of purpose and motivation to shoot and dive headfirst into the oncoming storm. I began to find my courage to get ironically close during a time of social distancing. I had to. I couldn’t shoot scared anymore.
Health care workers administer early rounds of covid-19 tests at Riverbank Elementary School in West Columbia, SC. 06.04.20
I began to apply that courage to other areas of my life. As people were forced to pull away for safety I overcorrected and threw myself into the lives of others. I started to make some of the best photos of my life. And the good relationships I had were fortified by the struggle. I learned for the first time how much of our ability to thrive is built on those relationships.
But as I put myself out there more I fell for people and then fell down. Where my anxiety once manifested as avoidance it now swung wildly the other way into desperate or anxious attachment. I didn’t want to let go.
Much crisis, so collapse.
“Shoegaze Equinox” 03.28.22
I hadn’t done the work. I was still guided by the anxious pit in my stomach. My photography has connected me to more people and given me more experiences than anything else I’ve ever done, but so much of that is fleeting. It’s an illuminated path to the fire but you still have to do the work to get there and not get so close it burns you. You have to give the fire space to grow and radiate healthy and loving warmth or else it goes out and you are left in the cold and the dark.
It was cold when I made the photo in the subway that day, but not in my heart. I saw the moment and acted with initiative to capture the critical attachment between mother and child. In that moment I was secure. I felt light, floating up the stairs as I made that frame. I was for once completely present.
