05/21/2026
I’ve been thinking a lot about what photos are meant to be through this set of my dearest friend in celebration of her graduation last year. I think it’s easy to feel like this set is discombobulated, the scenes are everywhere and nowhere all at once. There’s no theme or vision aside from documenting my friend in all the places that shaped her these past few years. We wandered the neighborhoods and random side streets in Berkeley, climbed to the roof of the physics building, went up the Bell Tower, sat in her lab, trekked to which is the grocery store she literally will not stop talking about to his day, and in all of it I’m realizing this set can’t be separated because we are all complicated and complex people. We wander. We go to the grocery store. We go to our workplaces. How can I curate a set of images to make them feel “cohesive” when maybe the reality is life isn’t cohesive? Rebecca is the smartest person I know, she studied computer science and astrophysics. Yet she’s also the most incredible visionary and artist. How do you craft a series of images to tell that story?
Maybe all these thoughts are in part stirred by a recent pondering from on the role of niches in photography, but if my job is to tell stories, then you best believe I want to tell them in full. So here’s a set of a friend who doesn’t fit into any one “box”, and a reminder that photos are to tell stories. And stories are complicated, nuanced, intermingled and beautiful. May we not curate so far as to lose the complexities and seeming disjunctions that make them so.
