INTRODUCING MY NEW BOOK: SUMMER BODIES

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It started off as just an excuse to go to the beach. I would stuff a backpack with my Hasselblad, a cheap red blanket to lay on the sand, and a book - I was reading Leaves of Grass that summer. Off I went in search of moments when the light hit just right and kept my eyes peeled for people that would make a good picture. The ones with a piercing hundred-yard stare, with the exhibitionist desire to bare it all, or with the generosity of spirit to patiently wait while I set up my camera. What I ultimately found on these coarse beaches was that bodies of all shapes, colors, and backgrounds can strip themselves of physical or metaphysical trappings and take their place in the sun.

Summer Bodies is a photographic search for the universal, for places where bodies are truly democratized and the identities constructed for us by society cease to exist, even if only for a few seconds. I criss-crossed many beaches and approached people I didn’t know to take their picture. The ones that accepted were then given a pre-stamped postcard so that they could write to me and have the opportunity to seize the narrative of the experience as they saw it. Only a few chose to write back. In a very Whitman-esque plot twist, Summer Bodies became less about portraits of strangers and more about seeing myself through others, in those fleeting seconds when I pressed the shutter and the sunlight, and sea spray and ancient grains of sand all grazed our skin in the exact same way.