One of the difficulties with printing my abstract work is its color and brightness. Screens handle these variables differently than printers; they can recreate both in a way that paper and ink can't reproduce. Seen in isolation, a print can come close, but it will never glow the way a screen does. I am trying to capture and present light. A print can hint at light, but it can't create it.
Much of my abstract inspiration comes from James Turrell, whose spatial works use the colors of natural phenomena, or project vivid colors in perfectly controlled environments. Even when I first started making light-based works, I thought about using gigantic screens or projections to present images, the colors illuminating spaces and viewers alike. In practice, it is difficult to make or install such work, or find a gallery willing to present it. For now, I have had to settle for printing on paper until a better solution is available.
I consider the work I see on my computer screen as being in its 'original' form. OLED displays are unique in that they display 'true' black; parts of the screen that are not displaying an image are turned off, which creates the sensation of an image floating in the air rather than being displayed on a screen. Certain displays are also capable of displaying a much wider range of color, resulting in more vivid, saturated images that have a greater sensation of movement or vibration.
One day I will experiment with installing larger OLED screens capable of displaying work at its full size, perhaps flush with the walls in darkened rooms so that it is difficult to distinguish between the background and the screen. In the meantime, well-lit prints are an acceptable approximation.
12.7.25
A brief flash of shadow from a hundred pigeons flying overhead in silence.
The first light through the elevated subway tracks after being covered by scaffolding for a year.
11.28.25
The soft under-cabinet lighting in the kitchen at 3AM, when the light from outside is nothing but night-blue.
The damp leaves outside moving in the wind and rain of a storm, shaking and swaying.
10.30.25
Two pigeons dancing on the breeze next to the J tracks, following each other in loops and spirals.
The lightlit gaps in early morning clouds on the way to work.
A baby bird chirping in the rafters of JFK terminal 4.
Florida clouds—almost cartoonishly perfect in shape and spacing.
10.21.25
I love to do things on my own. I'm not sure exactly where the compulsion comes from, but even when I was young, I didn't want my parents' help. Partly it was because I wanted to prove I could do anything myself, but the other part was a vague feeling that accepting help meant not earning the result—whether success or failure. If I worked alone, at least I'd know that I deserved the credit if I did well.
Credit is something I think about a lot in photography. So many photographs depend on more than technical skill with a camera; studio photographs in particular are a careful engineering of things like light, models, outfits, and makeup. Even in the simplest scenario of photographer and subject, who deserves the credit: the photographer, or the subject?
This question is what led me to abstraction. I still have a deep love for street photography, and there is something about the hunt for compelling moments that feels more satisfying than work in the studio. But when I found a way to *make* subjects out of light, rather than photograph something physical—that was when I felt I'd discovered what I really wanted to do.
Much of my fascination with trying to create something from scratch comes from being a writer. I studied creative writing and have a degree in it, and even wrote two novels, neither yet published. As much as the process of writing sometimes felt like pulling teeth, I loved the creative act itself. I primarily wrote fantasy, and being able to make up a whole new world—and even more, to feel like I was discovering it, rather than creating it—was what kept me going even when the process got difficult.
I wanted to bring that form of creation to photography, and come as close as possible to a pure creative act, to genuinely create something from nothing. There is too much technology involved for that to be strictly true, of course; the engineering that goes into modern cameras and computers is astounding, and I must give credit to the long line of scientists and engineers who made such devices possible. But there is something so pure to me about a machine that operates on electricity interpreting and manipulating light—someday I hope I'll be able to display my work on screens in the dark, so that they come closer to what I see when I'm editing.
In the end, all I want is to be solely responsible for what I make, and to not have any lingering questions about if it's my photographic skill or the beauty of the subject that people are appreciating. I think there's more to be written on that subject, but that's all I have time for.
10.20.25
Late at night, a lone police officer on a horse crossing an intersection on Delancey; the horse did not want to cooperate and stopped often, whinnying each time. The noise of the horse’s hooves on the street were loud and sharp.
A man masked with a bandana tuning a cello in the entrance to a subway.
A small, dead mouse on the sidewalk, right next to where a delivery driver was unloading cases of beer.
A crowd of teenagers arguing vocally on the subway over whose vape was whose.
10.16.25
I have thought about what I call bare-sensor photography for a while, but it wasn’t until last year that I decided to try to make something from it. There were various technical and conceptual hurdles to overcome: for instance, when you remove the lens, all sorts of things can get onto and into the sensor, none of which are kind to the delicate parts inside. Further, if you point a sensor at the world without anything in the way, the results are unimpressive, mostly dull gradients with no structure. There is no subject, and nothing interesting to look at.
I tried for a while to reproduce the way light looks reflected through water or glass; I love the way it seems to stretch out and form webs and other shapes. But I was never able to produce small enough shapes to fit them on the sensor, and there was still the problem of handling things like water and glass close to an open camera.
My first breakthrough was in the Blueforms series. I used a lens, but when I manipulated the raw files in Lightroom, patterns and shapes started to appear. Some of the shapes are just noise, but others are hidden variations in light, so dim that they aren’t visible in the original image. I didn’t bring this idea back to bare-sensor photography for some time, but even when I did, the results were too similar to the Blueforms, with fields of shapes and patterns but no single subjects.
After becoming more comfortable with putting objects close to the sensor, I used pieces of cardboard and eventually my hands to block parts of the incoming light. After trial and error, I was able to make two small openings between my fingers while pointing the sensor directly at a light, and the result became Lightforms #1.
Many experiments followed. There is a very narrow range of light that can be used; I started relying on the histograms to target it. The light spot can’t be too large, or too small, and the ISO must stay low to keep sensor noise low. It is also surprisingly difficult to form shapes with just one hand and no other objects, but that was the method I decided on. I wanted be able to feel myself shaping the light—impossible, but I wanted it anyway.
Different processing methods yield radically different outcomes. Aurorals rely on wider gaps but steeper angles, with narrow bands of light raking across the sensor sideways. Etherealites are tiny spots of light that are almost entirely invisible before processing, but when boosted and colored, become strange, floating organic forms. Lightforms are somewhere in between, with hard forms immersed in fields of color.
I am sure I will find new methods as I continue to experiment, but I am pleasantly surprised by the ones I’ve already found.
10.11.25
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