If We Could Talk Images

If We Could Talk, 2015 A handful of stories we never shared because I never asked. Mostly shot in my neighborhood and on my usual subway trains, If We Could Talk, 2015 is discrete, small, behind-closed-doors, and in-close-quarters. It is sneaky, instinctual, and invisible. It’s a fly on the wall and it’s waiting, just waiting. The images are true and the stories are tribute to those I want to connect with, but am too timid to talk to. As If We Could Talk’s creator, I shoot the arrow and paint the bulls-eye around where it lands. Your story begins where my gaze ends. I am author and audience. I am enamored by who I think you are. Using the camera phone like a pen to take notes and an invisibility cloak, I study what would usually be invisible. The eyes may be the portals to the soul but our life is transcribed upon our hands. The palm is not the only volume to hold our tales. The knuckles, the nails, the veins, the cracked skin, the pristine dermis, each a chapter bursting with stories. Who we touch, how we provide, how it feels to be you: these are the stories we never shared, because I never asked. The square format is familiar and suggestive, like peering through a window or picking up an old Polaroid. It feels familiar and intimate; each part of the frame is equal and easy to get behind. The secrecy behind the image satisfies my need for intimacy in New York City. The secrecy of the shot, and the close quarters environment plays into framing the extreme close-up images. The focus and abstraction of the whole presents all and nothing simultaneously. The lines and frames intersect creating individual jigsaw pieces waiting to be placed in a long lost puzzle. I invite you to unlock and decode each image. I hope you will find mystery in the mundane and dare to make something out of nothing. Find a story, find a hero, find a far-far-far-away but most of all, find your connection through our gauzy, guarded city. Be it fact or fiction, allow yourself the enjoyment of the worth mentioning and worth-making up. Your story can land you in a sweetened sense of self worth. You can do that even with your social anxiety and averted stares. I welcome you to share in the faux-connection; it can be enough for now. At the end of the day when we are most weary, I imagine revitalizing your spirits. I wish you knew how much I am rooting for you but I am still too shy to say.Read less