Portfolio Category - Portrait Awards 2014

Look At Me A Diary of Loss and Longing LOOK At Me is a collection of portraits of young men who agreed to be photographed. I asked them to arrive unprepared, to sit three feet in front of a 50mm lens, to think silently about something with an emotional charge for them, and then to beam that out to me entirely through their eyes. Each young man's portrait is intentionally similar, taken in a public place using available light, each face being composed to one side of the frame while the other side breathes within the surrounding environment. In this way, a stylistic conformity brings all of the young men together. But in reality, as each face disappears into the next, the young men diverge radically with each broadcasting their own urgency, immediacy, and place within the universe. The young men are chosen for a boyish look and a projection of openness and vulnerability. While this is a true collaboration of subject and photographer, it is also a personal journey. With each portrait, I absorb their youthfulness and explore aging, identity, lost opportunity, and an obsession with beauty and artlessness.