Do you remember that time I decided to completely stop taking photos for over a year? Come on, I know you do. This was the year after I left college, and it was a very long year for both of us. You see, that year ended remarkably different then it began, and photography was my last major before I left school the following year. I believed I lost my work, my passion, my projects, the very photographs that creatively turned me on. You, believed you lost me. But, a period of not working on my art turned out to be a period of working on myself, on my relationships, and on my relationship with myself. I developed better results from the negative events in my life. Yet, every time I am asked if MJ stands for Mary Jane, adding, “My name is Peter Parker!” I remember how I started off, for a time, as a film major.
At times it seems silly how a closet filled with things I could not bear to look at anymore held a hard drive with all the photographs I was dying to see again. A work, a passion project, turned away because it was buried beneath memories of a winter that never melted away. That’s why the work made me so happy, taken as a good season frosted over to one I will never forget. The “M” could stand for moving, as in one thing to the next. From the way I changed my hair as a teenager, to the way I begged to change my room, to the way a child cannot bare the moment their surroundings do not match the person they are anymore. Maybe it stands for Mary, as in Mary in Winter, the chaotic creation which started it all. Or, maybe it stands for moments, as in live in them. I am consistently, relentlessly, honestly in pursuit of the person I always wanted to be. So, maybe the “J” means journey, as in it’s not about the destination.
At times it seems silly how a closet filled with things I could not bear to look at anymore held a hard drive with all the photographs I was dying to see again. A work, a passion project, turned away because it was buried beneath memories of a winter that never melted away. That’s why the work made me so happy, taken as a good season frosted over to one I will never forget. The “M” could stand for moving, as in one thing to the next. From the way I changed my hair as a teenager, to the way I begged to change my room, to the way a child cannot bare the moment their surroundings do not match the person they are anymore. Maybe it stands for Mary, as in Mary in Winter, the chaotic creation which started it all. Or, maybe it stands for moments, as in live in them. I am consistently, relentlessly, honestly in pursuit of the person I always wanted to be. So, maybe the “J” means journey, as in it’s not about the destination.