2:01 a.m. - Jan. 20, 2003
...just a dream figure in someone else's dream...

you see the thing about night is that the sun is gone...its not so much that its dark out---its just that the sun is gone-------this huge bright light that pours through everything just goes away for a couple hours and there is darkness...this absence of such a familiar and important object makes night almost surreal...otherworldly.

i guess what i'm trying to say is that i think the absence of something so common and powerful interests me......night time is almost fake---dreamlike...its almost not real.

and all of this is like a big metaphore for what i think i like most about art...about making art...about seeing art...about all of it.

when i take a picture i'm not trying to capture an artistic moment---i'm trying to capture a moment---it doesn't really matter what it is as long as it interests me....it could be someone sitting with a weird look in their eyes--it could be the way a bright light seems to just flow around the corner of a building--it could be smoke rising from an ash tray--it could be anything really. capturing that instant is the only important part about taking pictures to me.......the art (if you want to call it that) comes in when you take that instant and try to make something beautiful out of it---------and fuck you if you think beauty is just the way something looks-----beauty can be in the meaning----beauty can be in the accident----beauty can be a mistake-------------beauty can be anything. anything.

the idea is you take a moment and you make it important---you make something out of nothing......a smile becomes an idea-----a light becomes a statement----a scratch becomes a metaphore...an instant--a single moment in time--------it becomes a device of infinite beauty. thats the idea anyway.

and i'm just writing all this because i feel like writing it...it could be bullshit-------but i like trying to do whatever it is i'm doing when i make images........its important to me...it interests me...its beautiful to me.

like this

before ~ after