09/11/2026
Today marks 23 years without my dad.
He’s now been gone longer than he was here for my life, which is a strange thing to wrap my head around.
And the older I get, the more I think I understand how much losing him shaped the way I see photographs.
I have maybe, maybe, 20 photos of my dad. None from before I was born, and nothing from when he was growing up. I honestly don’t really know what he looked like through so much of his life.
There’s a photograph that still hangs on my grandmother’s wall of her sitting on her father’s lap. I never met my great-grandfather, and the photo isn’t of me or even my dad, but it has always held my attention. There’s something about being able to look at a moment that happened long before you existed and still feel connected to it.
I think that’s part of why photographs have always meant so much to me.
Over the years, when someone has passed away, sometimes a parent or grandparent, sometimes a beloved pet, I’ve received emails asking, “By chance, do you have any more photos of them?”
And I understand that question so deeply.
Because 23 years later, I would give almost anything to have a few more of my dad.
Not necessarily perfect photographs. Not everyone looking at the camera. Not even particularly beautiful ones.
I’d take the ordinary ones.
Him sitting in a chair. Laughing at something. Holding me. Walking through the background of a frame. The way his hands looked. The way he stood. Just… him.
Maybe that’s why I’m so drawn to the in-between moments. Why I care about photographing the people you love exactly as they are.
Because sometimes the photographs that might feel ordinary today become the ones we would give anything to have years from now.
Missing you, Dad. Always.