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The seed for these pictures was planted in Mexico many years ago, when a young boy, came to me and startled me with an unaffected gaze. He stood like a wall in front of me and said, "Who are you and what do you want?” After several uncomfortable moments of averting his gaze I gave him an answer that satisfied him; not the real answer, and he left.
Some time afterwards with more miles and maturity under my belt, I came to understand that the boy merely reflected back to me my own angst. I also understood that anytime we meet someone, one way or another, we ask the same questions: "Who are you?" and "what do you want?" Until those questions are answered no relationship is possible. We also ask ourselves these questions throughout our lives at various stages and at varying degrees, and no one reaches real maturity without asking these questions.
The next time I recognized the same unaffected gaze was in Santa Cruz, Oaxaca where the Indian population had gathered to celebrate the first communion of some of its children. There I was, with bushel of unassuming, unaffected gazes falling on me, the only stranger. So I began to photograph one frame at a time with an almost painful anxiety that this opportunity would disappear, that someone would yell at me, " Hey you stop that!" or that every time I made a picture one of the girls would complain or turn her gaze from me and their magic would disappear. None did. Click, wind, push the shutter release, click, wind, and sweat. "Just one more God, just one more." Click! When it was over a priest came to me and asked, "Who are and what do you want?"
Because of my background as a photojournalist I seek a narrative, even in places and things, in much the same way that native cultures throughout the world believe that everything has a spirit. Consequently my work is about the internal life of people, places and things. On a deeper level I seek in my subjects, as a Zen monk put it, "the face you were born with"; moment of the unassuming authenticity that transcends the timeliness and self-consciousness of our existence.
Many artists’ work is narcissistic in nature. It is about their style and who they are. In my personal work I seek primarily to see something of who or what my subjects are.
I see with the same eye, whether I am working as annual report photographer, an advertising photographer or shooting personal work, I am seeking the unexpected, a moment, a whisper from inside that shows me what has been obscured by our understanding of the world.
