Crush
2026-ongoing
I am tired of explaining my work.
I am tired of constructing concepts, finding theoretical references, and searching for meanings that might justify the existence of an image.
I know how to do these things. I have done them for years.
I can surround an image with words, definitions, descriptions, and interpretations. I can construct a narrative around a body of work and make it sound coherent, meaningful, and intellectually convincing.
But I am sick of it.
Because so often, these explanations come afterward.
We make something without knowing exactly why. Then we look at what we have made, organize it, construct a narrative, and present that narrative as though it had been there from the beginning.
To me, that feels like a scam.
I don’t want to do that anymore.
I want to return to something primitive.
An urge to create.
An impulse that comes before understanding.
A moment when I want to make a photograph, without knowing why I want to make it.
I don’t want to begin with a concept and make images to illustrate it.
I want to make photographs because I want to make photographs.
I want to preserve that unconscious moment, before the image becomes an argument, before it is organized into a narrative, before it is asked to mean something.
I want the image to exist without having to justify itself.
Something to be touched.
Something to be looked at.
Something to be fully seen, but never necessarily understood.
I can speak about these images. I can describe them, interpret them, and construct meanings around them.
But I refuse the obligation to do so.
I don’t believe an image needs to be explained in order to be experienced.
I don’t believe an artist must provide an intellectual justification for the act of creation.
And I don’t believe the audience is entitled to an explanation simply because they are looking.
They can imagine.
They can interpret.
They can misunderstand.
They can feel something entirely different from what I felt.
I welcome that.
But the images remain mine.
Not because I control what they mean, but because I made them.
And this is Crush.
A crush on someone, perhaps.
A fleeting movement of feeling.
An attraction that arrives unexpectedly, without reason, without permission.
But more importantly, it is also about returning to my crush on photography.
To that sudden desire to make an image.
To the pleasure of looking.
To the excitement of discovering something without knowing what I am looking for.
I want to fall in love with making photographs again.
Not with what they can explain.
Not with what they can prove.
Not with what they can represent.
But with the act of making them.