The stories behind the photographs
Her father’s glasses
One of my early clients brought me her late father's glasses, which he nearly always wore and which were part of how she remembered him.
He loved to read, and as we talked she brought me several books from his library. Her father was Armenian, and the books were in Armenian too.
I had initially been unsure how to photograph the glasses because so much of them is empty space, and I was concerned that a background might be boring or take attention away from them. The books gave me something that belonged in the photograph because they were part of his life too.
In the finished photograph, his glasses rest on one of his books, with a little of the Armenian text visible if you look closely. For her, those particular glasses, the book and the language connect the photograph with her father in a way that somebody else's image never could.
A card from Jen
My late wife, Jen, gave me a paper pop-up pirate ship with a handwritten note: “May we have many more great adventures together!”
We did have those adventures, travelling together, and I kept the card on my credenza for years because I loved it.
I photographed the ship while Jen was alive, and since her death the image has come to hold both my love for her and the adventures and relationship we shared.
It also takes me back to the imagined adventures of childhood, when a ship like this could carry me into another world, so the photograph brings several parts of my life together.
An afternoon in the backyard
When I was five or six, I spent an afternoon in the backyard with another boy, a plastic ray gun and the feeling that we were exploring a distant planet.
The original toy disappeared long ago, but years later I found the same model and photographed it, hoping to bring back the feeling of that afternoon when something plastic in my hand could make a whole other world feel real.
The leaves carry something of that backyard into the photograph, while the light emerging from the toy has the playful, magical quality of the adventure I remember.