The Jungle Outside: Relationship with Photography

If we spend time together, your life will end up on my film. For so many of my friends, I think this is a known fact, if not an expectation. My friends have laughed at me for bringing around not one, not two but three or four cameras around with me on some of the occasions we've gone out. It's true. Sometimes, it's even worse. A lot of my lived experiences become projections, for better or worse. Here to remind me of moments and fleeting connections. Maybe there to portray my life in a certain kind of light to others.

I don't know how I feel about the word shutterbug.

A guy I once dated, once fell entirely in love with, was a photographer in essence. He took photos of so many things. From art to graffiti to architecture, to lines, to stupid stuff he found on the street, to photos of us in bed. I learned so much from watching him work. He saw the world in a way that I would later describe to another date: the way artists see the world. It is no longer just objects against a background, or subjects in focus. It is everything. It is how lines manifest in reality, the intricacies of colour against colour. The way the world, the way reality becomes reality. Artists recognize this. To see the world with an artistic eye. He made me see things differently. Him and the work of so many photographers, famous and not, helped me see beyond mundanity. Beyond the day-to-day, possibly to see more of the day-to-day. There are so many photographers whose focus are on the everyday; the mundane rather than the absurd. The understated rather than the glam. Through their inspiration, I want to record my life.

Hanna is a dear friend, a model, a photographer, a muse. A while ago, she makes an effort to capture the everyday. The normal. The good, the bad, the ugly. Hanna takes photos and captures video of herself falling to pieces. She exposes herself and her sheer vulnerability and strength to the world. From Hanna, I learn that we must. I'm not sure if it is our responsibility or perhaps, our salvation, but we must. It is photography as honesty, photography as reflection, photography as enlightening.

I'm not a photographer and I don't like the word shutterbug. I have hundreds and hundreds of photos of the people in my life, of the moments in my life. The everyday, the special moments, the mundane, maybe even some tragic. I try to capture a lot of my life, as much as possible. I want to remember the things and the people that made a difference in my life, that made me feel something once. I want to see the slow, gradual progression of my life. I want to have something to show for the years I've lived, the things I've done. I want to capture the moments that made the people around me happy or sad, or something.

I'm not a photographer. I wouldn't even consider photography a particularly great passion. I like moments. I like feelings. Photography, for me, is only a vehicle. It is the tangible of memory and feeling. My life's timeline printed and painted for all to see. These are some of my favourite moments from the end of 2016 on my latest roll of 35mm film.