Big thanks to the jury over at @american_photography_winners for selecting work from a series I’ve been working on loosely titled American Mirage for the runner up category for AP42 and reminding me that I’ve yet to carry enough water and chop enough wood to have let go of my ego. 2 of 368 out of over 6000 submissions to get the distinction, and this is like my 5th or 6th time over the years, but I’m still coming after that book! Congrats to my friends and peers that made it in and continue to show up for me when I’ve got questions about how to keep my head screwed on straight. Over the course of the last year I’ve traveled to 26 US states and throughout have found myself drawn to making a document that serves as a metaphor for the tension between how America is portrayed in popular media and what it looks like to the people living in it.
Outtakes from a morning with one of my favorite musicians, Francis Starlight, for @nytimes . This shoot (and many others) happened in early 2020 and ran right as the pandemic was hitting us all like a meteorite and I chose not to share much work at that time because I didn’t think it was what people needed or wanted. I also had a toddler at home and was scared of what was happening, of what might happen. It made me doubt myself at a time when my career was finally taking the kind of shape I’d worked to achieve. Since then my priorities and values have shifted, but that hasn’t changed my desire to connect with people, to tell stories, and to explore the corners of other people’s lives they’re willing to share.
Scenes of a peaceful protest. San Francisco, City Hall, June 14th, 2025. “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
All week long I kept hearing stories from and about women who are mothers whose partners were tasking them with figuring out how to celebrate themselves. It’s a mistake I’ve made many times in many relationships.
What’s become clear to me about being a man in a heterosexual relationship, but really a man anywhere, is that the best way I can take care of myself is to tend to the water I swim in, which is first, and foremost, my relationship with my wife and my son. Being a husband and a father has forced me to look at the habits that were modeled for me when I was a child, many of which were unhealthy, albeit by people that loved me and tried to love each other.
This has not been an easy or comfortable process, looking at myself, at my behaviors, with honesty and accountability and a willingness to do the work to change. It’s not a process that’s over, either. I keep hearing stories about how women are treated, and it’s hard to not feel an immense sense of sadness about the world.
I’ve struggled to understand what equanimity means in my meditation practice over the years. I’ve come to see it as being able to have the space for the sadness and anger that comes in the face of my shortcomings, of the injustice in the world, of how so many children have grown up to be small men with power, and to have space for forgiveness, of myself and others, and to face the pain of accepting that I can be both part of the problem and the solution. In this way, it’s an acknowledgment of all the mothers that have come before me that didn’t get what they deserved from the world, of what my own wife hasn’t gotten from me at times, and the acceptance of the work it takes to at least try to put these people at the center of my life in meaningful ways, not just with words.
My wife is a badass. I could brag about her for years. The fact that planning celebrations of her means doing things like spending the day sandwiched between the mountains and the sea eating oysters and laughing and then photographing her like she’s the cover of an issue of Vanity Fair, makes it seem like a dream, but one that has taken real effort, and, of course, an incredible amount of luck.
@hooddesignstudio for the current issue of @wallpapermag . Thanks to everyone at the studio and @cparthonnaud for the opportunity to float through their part of the universe for a couple of days and to get to spend some time with Walter. Truly inspiring human.
@hooddesignstudio for @wallpapermag out on stands now. Been an admirer of this mag for a long time and was a pleasure to finally get to work with @cparthonnaud (who’s got an interview up with @christopherandersonphoto , one of all our favorites). Big thanks to Walter, @regineallison , and the rest of the team for their kindness and willingness to let me float around the studio for a couple of days. If you don’t know Walter Hood’s work, I highly recommend spending some time with it, ideally in person.
The Amazon River Basin last month. Lot more to say about that and this place. It’s a land of heightened senses, where everything is in a constant state of birth and life and death, where everything is feeding into everything, and nothing feels precious, and everything feels sacred.
