It's been about 8 months since I embarked on a journey through Europe realizing how much I love taking photographs. The response has been fruitful with meeting incredible people throughout the world and really getting a more focused idea on what I want to do with the medium. Highlight moments for me include:
→ Moving to Brooklyn and hanging out on rooftops.
→ Road tripping over 5,000 miles from Seattle to Brooklyn during my winter break for an Odelius project.
→ Meeting and shooting David Lynch's portrait in Iowa, thanks to my dearest Mia and friends over at DLF.TV
→ Hired by Glossom.com to do photo & Twitter coverage on NYC Creative Week and NY 2010 Photo Festival.
→ I'll be visiting Stockholm in September for a showcase on work by me and other young artists hosted by Odelius.
I've become a true believer that if you want something, you just need to ask yourself if you desire it enough. With a sufficient amount of patience, you can reach whatever you're after. I learned this from my father, who also at my age lived in Brooklyn, except as a full-time pizza boy. I'm now a customer to those pizza shops. Love ya dad.
I've also kept busy battling my semesters over at Pratt but that's all over-with finally. Now it's time to get the ball rolling with a new summer long photobook project that I'm very excited to announce:
MIDDLE EAST 'CULTURAL PROJECT'
To breakdown my plans very simply, I will be traveling for 3 months throughout the Middle East with the collaboration of Osama Eisa, who is a current graduate student at Georgetown University studying International and Middle Eastern Affairs. This is an entirely personal and self-driven project, with the goal of creating a more accurate awareness of the current state of the mid-east region, going beyond the cameras of television networks and war ridden zones.
The book will include carefully presented stories on various cities, featuring interviews, journal entries, collages, and more. The aim is to avoid making any politically biased statements but rather to compare and contrast the conditions of life, people, and locations. It has gotten to the point where we can undeniably say there is a misunderstanding and an overwhelming amount of negativity revolving around the mid-east, so this will be an approach to cleaning up a mess and exposing a culture of vast historical significance and beauty.
Cities on my itinerary (to date) are: Cairo, Beirut, Damascus, Istanbul, Amman, Kuwait City, Tel Aviv, amongst others.
News and updates will be posted on my flickr, tumblr, and twitter. I'll try to make updates as often as I can, but they will be posted sparingly. I really want to focus on these countries and taking the right photographs. It's hard to say right now but most of the content should be online by the end of August.
I really want to thank everybody who has been giving me continuous support on my adventures and I especially thank those who will be supporting me during this summer project, I wouldn't be able to do this without all of you. Much love,