I grew up believing everyone around me could die at any moment.
My parent’s religion was an end times religion and so the childhood books that I used to learn to read featured colorful illustrations of people dying in fires as (their) god killed them during the last days which would presumably be happening at any minute.
I was told that the people in my classes at school who were not the same religion would fatefully end up just like the people in those illustrations.
My inner voice knew this seemed suspect since I actually really liked most of the people in my classes at school (much to the distress of my parents).
But that early insistence that the world would burn along with my ‘worldly’ friends and first crushes informed how I felt about everyone around me.
If my parents went away for a weekend, I was convinced they would never come back and I would immediately grieve as they were halfway out the door.
If I left my teenage friends as I did when I was taken (not at will) to live in New Mexico for a year in High School to forget them once and for all, I grieved for the loss of them as if I would have never seen them again (I did of course. The year long trip - a last ditch attempt to get me to keep on going with the religion - didn’t work at all).
While my parents used that fear that the current world would end to constantly try to convert and save people, I translated that fear into an almost nihilistic embrace of life in my late teens and early twenties after they disowned me and I moved out on my own.
Long after my parents and that religion was out of my life, I carried that feeling with me: the one that hinted to me persistently that every day could be my last (since I was now ‘worldly’) and every person I cared about could perish at any second. It was like a locket I had been wearing around my neck for so long that it burned into my chest searing its impact deep into in my soul.
Every moment felt like it could be the final one.
All conversations, even the silliest ones, felt as if they had a profound shadow edging its way over every joke. Shared experiences had a bittersweet impact.
I never said goodnight to a friend or lover without wondering if I told them how much they meant to me or if I properly resolved any issues out of a subconscious feeling that I could potentially wake up with them gone. Regret was something I feared more than loss.
I worded that last paragraph in past tense but the truth is I still carry that fatalism with me as if it is woven into the fabric of my existence.
It’s one of the reasons I initially went into pre-med when I finally decided to go to college. Death, which always seemed imminent, just felt like another experience on the spectrum of life and figuring out how our strange outward structures kept us waking up every day was an ongoing fascination.
“My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing…”
I instinctively said yes to when she asked me at the last minute if I wanted to come speak at a creative retreat she was having this past weekend. Another speaker had to bow out due to a circumstance of loss and I was apparently on the list of speakers for next year so she messaged me asking if I could come speak and attend the retreat.
It was a reflex reaction to say yes to that request.
That deeply embedded fatalism that runs rampant in my bloodstream sent shivers up my arm when I thought of missing something profound. This happens to me often. It’s a paradoxical reflex I carry with me alongside anxiety. Imagine saying yes to jumping out of a plane while also being mortally afraid of heights and a loss of control.
In some ways this weird fatalistic reflex reaction has worked out to my advantage in the past few years as I have literally found myself saying yes to getting into a helicopter while also feeling like my heart would unceremoniously hurl itself up my throat and out of my mouth (for example).
“Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
Write, for example,'The night is shattered
and the blue stars shiver in the distance.’”
It was in Western Greenland nearly a year ago on an icebreaker that I remember standing on the deck outside at midnight thinking about the weirdness of time as a concept.
Earlier that day I had seen a documentary about how time flows differently in the Arctic where there are seasons of darkness and seasons of light.
In a place where darkness and light dictate life and where death tip toes on the perimeters of reality teetering on the thinning ice, time is simultaneously more profound and less profound.
That night, I watched ice float across the vast sea as the snow covered mountains jutted up from the water like heartbeats until the dark blue whisper of night fell onto the sea like a blanket and the impermanence of Earth and humanity was tangible in that moment as if I could touch the ephemerality with my frozen fingertips.
“Reality is a permeable membrane that time slips in and out of,
and time is malleable,
bent by the wings of a plane or the cracking of ice sheets.”
The above sentence is one that I wrote down that night that has haunted me every since.
Until this past weekend.
I spent a year thinking about the above encounter. When I had to write about my book during this year of pondering all of this, I wrote about how fascinated and appalled I was by mortality, about how time simultaneously feels like a thief and an absurd imagined concept.
“Love is so short, forgetting is so long…”
I cried and laughed with so many other creative spirits this past weekend, maybe more than I ever have. While I initially went as a speaker, I relished meeting everyone and sharing in their own mini and major moments of catharsis.
A light switched on in my soul though when I was introduced to another of the speakers. We shared stories about a mutual friend (ironically who was responsible for the Arctic encounter above) and laughed a lot.
I wasn’t aware of what he was speaking about or what his story was until he briefly answered what he would be speaking about before we had to go to scheduled morning lecture. His name is Jeremie Saunders and he was born with Cystic Fibrosis and he will die at any point in the next 10 years, maybe sooner, maybe later. Who knows? Again, time and mortality are simultaneously absurd.
It wasn’t until I heard him give his talk though that everything shifted for me.
His talk wasn’t about how he has perceived his life as carrying out a death sentence but rather how he views his knowledge of his own shifting expiration date as a gift because it has let him live in a way that has caused him to embrace the life and breaths he is living and breathing now. (please check him out: that “focuses on the absurd, inspirational, educational, and often times, hilarious stories of everyday people who are living with serious, chronic & terminal illnesses.” It’s brilliant).
The thing is, we are all going to die.
All of us.
I had heard this fact poignantly stated by Commander Hadfield in the Arctic in the context of explaining his own philosophy on life.
This isn’t the first time I have thought about this. In fact, I have thought about it for decades. It has peppered every fatalistic thought I have had.
At that time, I remember looking around the room when Commander Hadfield stated that truth. I heard the audible gasps and witnessed the uncomfortable shifting in chairs.
We avoid thinking of the fragility of our own mortality at the expense of enjoying it to its full extent because we think somehow that not thinking of it will render us immortal. If we never think about it maybe we can cheat the life cycle and transcend this mortal existence.
It’s the weightiness of how we perceive time along with the lightness of our perception that alters our vision of life. In truth, we are carrying the DNA of an almost overwhelming amount of people who have all lived and died lives, some short and some long in a relative sense, and those lives have had an impact in some way.
So when I listened to Jeremie’s perspective, I felt as if I finally heard someone channeling the absurdity of existence in a poignant and hilarious way as if to let everyone know that life is meant to be lived to its fullest extent.
And I knew right then and there with almost unwavering certainty what I want to work on that may span the rest of whatever life I have left.
“And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.”
I saw the first photo of me in this post in an end of the retreat slideshow. I remember the moment I walked up that path to see what was in the distance. Surrounded by trees, I felt alive. And in an instant I thought of everything I shared in the first parts of this post and how I have never shared any of that to complete strangers. What an either perfectly complementary or divergent set of thoughts to have.
And then towards the end of the slideshow I saw a photo of , Jeremie, and myself walking through the same forest and I realized that this may have been the most profound weekend of the year.
“Love is so short, forgetting is so long…”
I met so many people like Kristina and Jeremie this weekend who created a ripple in the fabric of my soul.
I looked into people’s eyes and ugly cried with every ounce of my being. I shared deep belly laughter with more people than I can count on two hands and hugged everyone as if I would never see them again (because that is what I do as I have just established in this post.)
I never once went to bed each night wondering if the day was complete enough in thoughts, words, actions.
Brooke, beyond being an incredible artist, is also a connector of souls.
Thank you Brooke.
And thank you to everyone who inspired me and touched me in such an indelible way.
You also inadvertently just shaped the rest of my career.
—
* all quotes aside from one of mine are from one of my favorite poems by Pablo Neruda - Tonight I Can Write (Poem 20) - if you are unfamiliar - this video below is my favorite way to experience it…
(it’s part of a playlist I made a long time ago about all the scenes and videos that have made a huge impression on my life and art if you are curious: )
The beautiful forest photos in this post were taken by .
My 2nd book of New York City photography, New York in the snow is currently available for pre-order worldwide!
Here are some Questions and Answers about the book:
I live in the United States or Canada. What is the link to use to order the book online?
United States Amazon:
United States Barnes and Noble:
Canada Amazon:
Canada Chapters Bookstore:
United States Walmart:
United States Target:
I like to shop at non-mainstream bookstores. Any love?
Yup! :)
The Strand:
Rizzoli Bookstore:
Kinokuniya:
IndieBound:
Powell’s:
Books - A - Million:
Hudson Booksellers:
Drama Bookshop NYC:
I live in the UK or other parts of Europe. What are the links to where I can purchase your book in my part of the world?
UK Amazon:
Waterstones:
The Guardian Bookshop:
Blackwell’S:
WHSmith:
I Live In Australia / New Zealand How Can I Order the book?
Booktopia:
What are the release dates for the book?
United States and Canada: September 5, 2017
United Kingdom, Europe, Australia: August 3, 2017
Is the book hardcover?
Yes, I am excited to announce that it is available as a hardcover book worldwide!
Front Cover:
Back cover:
I am proud to say that the printing is impeccable. I have not only included my writing but also the camera settings, cameras used, and locations for each photo …
The book is published by Ilex Press, an imprint of Octopus which is under Hachette.
Any book events or signings coming up?
Of course!
The official one will be a book launch by Sony here in NYC. Stay tuned for info on the date.
There will be other book signings and events around Manhattan and Brooklyn as well.
What’s the story behind this book?
I have been photographing every snowstorm in NYC for the last 6 years. I walk up to 8 miles at a time through blizzards, nor'easters, and all sorts of snowstorms. I am forever trying to capture the feelings of loneliness, isolation, anxiety , longing, and nostalgia that are felt as a New Yorker.
I have always been intrigued by time, mortality, desire, and memory. Snowstorms are when all of these feelings and concepts surface.
I paraphrased and read the intro to this book in explore what snow in New York City means to me (plus there are snow sounds and nothing is better than the sound of snow crunching underfoot) …
What’s your story? Where are you from?
I grew up here in New York City in Queens. My family was quite poor and my parents both moved to America to pursue better lives when they were younger.
In 2008, I was extremely broke and had very little money. I was also stressed out as I had quit my job to go back to school to finally finish the degree which I had abandoned nearly a decade earlier because I needed to work many jobs to support myself.
Living on my own since the age of 17 years old with no family support or safety net put me in the precarious position of working many jobs to keep myself afloat while living in New York City. I worked 7 days a week for quite a while and decided I needed to make a change in my life before my life passed me by and I barely explored my passions.
It took a huge leap of faith to put myself back in school. But I did. I decided to go back to school pursuing a pre-med path.
Without much in the way of material things or financial prosperity, walking became my number one way to deal with stress. It also became a way for me to experience the city like I hadn’t before. I would choose a direction and walk as far as my feet would take me; I still do this.
My walks opened my eyes to a New York City that I hadn’t experienced before. I knew that I wanted to capture the moments and experiences on my walks that made my heart swell. However, I was so broke that I couldn’t even afford a smartphone or a smartphone plan. I went on Amazon and purchased the cheapest point and shoot I could find. At $79, it was a huge investment at the time. That humble little camera had one button and a few settings (one of which was broken!). I didn’t care though. I finally had a tool to explore my view and vision of New York City.
In 2009, I decided to finally post the photos I had accumulated along the way online. I knew nothing about posting photography online and had heard that blogs were a great place to post photography. I literally googled the word “blog” one evening and Tumblr came up as the first search result. I decided to create my blog, NY Through The Lens on Tumblr purely for myself as a way to view my collected images in a beautiful way online.
Since I had no formal training in photography or in-depth knowledge of the rules and concepts defining the field, it didn’t occur to me that I’d have an audience for my work. I honestly didn’t think that anyone would be interested in what I was posting online to my Tumblr blog. However, within a few months of posting my photos to Tumblr, I amassed close to 70,000 followers and I was both humbled and touched by the messages I would receive on a weekly basis.
Most of my photography is heavily influenced by cinema, music, and other art forms as I have a background in fine art (painting and art history).
I am also endlessly haunted by a deep longing for a place that is unidentifiable but somehow familiar and indicative of what can be seen as home. I am on a never-ending quest to try to imbue my photography of Cities and landscapes with this complex notion Of nostalgic longing.
I am fascinated and interested in exploring how certain tones can produce feelings of different forms of nostalgia and how color or lack of color influences memory and desire.
I am currently a full-time photographer who is sponsored by Sony and my first book was a best-seller. It released In 2014. You can read about it .
I do commissioned work for Hollywood, television, ad agencies, interior designers and also sell my work as prints (and tapestries and much more) here:
Can I Where Else Find You Online?
If you are still reading, I love you. Thank you for reading this far into this post. Here is where to find me online:
I Also Recorded A Little Teaser Of Me Flipping through my book today in case you are into that kind of thing (I am!) …
It’s my most vulnerable photography because it’s my life’s passion. It feels a bit like sharing a deep secret with the world.
Dreams are always fun to share.
Hope you enjoy these dreams.
It’s OUT!!!!!
It is officially out there! My book just released everywhere.
This was my huge passion project and the result of 6 years of walking 7-9 miles through every blizzard, nor'easter, and snowstorm and I have all of you to thank for this for supporting me through this.
So, thank you. Sincerely.
If you get the book and feel like it, a review would mean the world :)
Off to Snoopy dance all day! (ok, also maybe ice cream which will be intense considering that I haven’t eaten added sugar in anything for ages :) )
My 2nd book of New York City photography, New York in the snow is currently available for pre-order worldwide!
Here are some Questions and Answers about the book:
I live in the United States or Canada. What is the link to use to order the book online?
United States Amazon:
United States Barnes and Noble:
Canada Amazon:
Canada Chapters Bookstore:
United States Walmart:
I like to shop at non-mainstream bookstores. Any love?
Yup! :)
The Strand:
Kinokuniya:
IndieBound:
Powell’s:
Books - A - Million:
Hudson Booksellers:
Drama Bookshop NYC:
I live in the UK or other parts of Europe. What are the links to where I can purchase your book in my part of the world?
UK Amazon:
Waterstones:
The Guardian Bookshop:
Blackwell’S:
WHSmith:
I Live In Australia / New Zealand How Can I Order the book?
Booktopia:
What are the release dates for the book?
United States and Canada: September 5, 2017
United Kingdom, Europe, Australia: August 3, 2017
Is the book hardcover?
Yes, I am excited to announce that it is available as a hardcover book worldwide!
Front Cover:
Back cover:
I am proud to say that the printing is impeccable. I have not only included my writing but also the camera settings, cameras used, and locations for each photo …
The book is published by Ilex Press, an imprint of Octopus which is under Hachette.
Any book events or signings coming up?
Of course!
The official one will be a book launch by Sony here in NYC. Stay tuned for info on the date.
There will be other book signings and events around Manhattan and Brooklyn as well.
What’s the story behind this book?
I have been photographing every snowstorm in NYC for the last 6 years. I walk up to 8 miles at a time through blizzards, nor'easters, and all sorts of snowstorms. I am forever trying to capture the feelings of loneliness, isolation, anxiety , longing, and nostalgia that are felt as a New Yorker.
I have always been intrigued by time, mortality, desire, and memory. Snowstorms are when all of these feelings and concepts surface.
I paraphrased and read the intro to this book in explore what snow in New York City means to me (plus there are snow sounds and nothing is better than the sound of snow crunching underfoot) …
What’s your story? Where are you from?
I grew up here in New York City in Queens. My family was quite poor and my parents both moved to America to pursue better lives when they were younger.
In 2008, I was extremely broke and had very little money. I was also stressed out as I had quit my job to go back to school to finally finish the degree which I had abandoned nearly a decade earlier because I needed to work many jobs to support myself.
Living on my own since the age of 17 years old with no family support or safety net put me in the precarious position of working many jobs to keep myself afloat while living in New York City. I worked 7 days a week for quite a while and decided I needed to make a change in my life before my life passed me by and I barely explored my passions.
It took a huge leap of faith to put myself back in school. But I did. I decided to go back to school pursuing a pre-med path.
Without much in the way of material things or financial prosperity, walking became my number one way to deal with stress. It also became a way for me to experience the city like I hadn’t before. I would choose a direction and walk as far as my feet would take me; I still do this.
My walks opened my eyes to a New York City that I hadn’t experienced before. I knew that I wanted to capture the moments and experiences on my walks that made my heart swell. However, I was so broke that I couldn’t even afford a smartphone or a smartphone plan. I went on Amazon and purchased the cheapest point and shoot I could find. At $79, it was a huge investment at the time. That humble little camera had one button and a few settings (one of which was broken!). I didn’t care though. I finally had a tool to explore my view and vision of New York City.
In 2009, I decided to finally post the photos I had accumulated along the way online. I knew nothing about posting photography online and had heard that blogs were a great place to post photography. I literally googled the word “blog” one evening and Tumblr came up as the first search result. I decided to create my blog, NY Through The Lens on Tumblr purely for myself as a way to view my collected images in a beautiful way online.
Since I had no formal training in photography or in-depth knowledge of the rules and concepts defining the field, it didn’t occur to me that I’d have an audience for my work. I honestly didn’t think that anyone would be interested in what I was posting online to my Tumblr blog. However, within a few months of posting my photos to Tumblr, I amassed close to 70,000 followers and I was both humbled and touched by the messages I would receive on a weekly basis.
Most of my photography is heavily influenced by cinema, music, and other art forms as I have a background in fine art (painting and art history).
I am also endlessly haunted by a deep longing for a place that is unidentifiable but somehow familiar and indicative of what can be seen as home. I am on a never-ending quest to try to imbue my photography of Cities and landscapes with this complex notion Of nostalgic longing.
I am fascinated and interested in exploring how certain tones can produce feelings of different forms of nostalgia and how color or lack of color influences memory and desire.
I am currently a full-time photographer who is sponsored by Sony and my first book was a best-seller. It released In 2014. You can read about it .
I do commissioned work for Hollywood, television, ad agencies, interior designers and also sell my work as prints (and tapestries and much more) here:
Can I Where Else Find You Online?
If you are still reading, I love you. Thank you for reading this far into this post. Here is where to find me online:
I Also Recorded A Little Teaser Of Me Flipping through my book today in case you are into that kind of thing (I am!) …
It’s my most vulnerable photography because it’s my life’s passion. It feels a bit like sharing a deep secret with the world.
Dreams are always fun to share.
Hope you enjoy these dreams.
My book New York in the Snow releases in all major stores in the U.S. (front table Barnes and Noble in NYC!), U.K., Canada in ONE WEEK!
It’s been a year since I went on a trip that changed my life.
I boarded an ice-breaker on the West coast of Greenland and journeyed for 18 days all the way up to 81 latitude near the North Pole in the Canadian High Arctic with and a group of 10 incredible people.
There is a pre-Arctic me.
There is a post-Arctic me.
And in-between those two versions of myself is the me that I am convinced is still there, in the Arctic, floating on a ghost-ship, wandering the decks at night.
It took me this long to be able to actually really go through the photos and videos I filmed while there because the last year has been one of the hardest, loneliest, scariest, and strangest in terms of my career and my personal life.
And while I have published a handful of my Arctic photos already and even had a brief gallery showing with Commander Hadfield (my goodness what a bizarre sentence to write), I hadn’t yet digested the full meaning of what everything meant on many levels: on a personal level, on an Earth level, on a profound, philosophical level.
The Arctic was one of the best experiences of my life and I knew it while I was there. That was the surreal aspect of it.
I even talked about it in the moment at 81 degrees latitude (which somehow over 33,000 people have watched, how? why? !…):
When you know that what you are experiencing is a peak and is something so incredibly profound and that it is creating a seismic shift in your soul, it’s one of the heaviest and bittersweet feelings.
The truth is that I am still trying to put this trip into words.
And I feel like just now, a year later, I am ready to go through the photos. There are hundreds I haven’t even touched in terms of editing and writing about.
It’s as if a whole chapter of my life is sitting unread in a book that has been weighed down with an anchor of circumstance.
I would be lying if I said that I didn’t think of this trip often especially as of late.
There is a truth I keep coming back to over and over again.
I was the happiest I have ever been in my life on that trip.
This was while standing on the deck of the Kapitan Khlebnikov as the first snow of the trip started to fall as we waited to board zodiacs (small rafts) to go on an adventure.
That look? That’s not one I see on my face often.
That’s pure joy.
I may never, ever be in a position where I am with (who is one of the most exceptional humans I have ever spent time with) and a truly phenomenal group of people as the ones I was with and with a ship crew that made me come full circle with my family history (more about that in a later post) and an expedition crew that sincerely helped me get through some of my deepest fears (via ).
But I have these photos and videos and memories forever.
And while I know that part of me is still there in the Arctic, the part of me that is here that is struggling to know what’s next can’t stop thinking about the impact that the Arctic had on me as I wonder how to turn that impact into another chapter of my life and career.
I don’t have those answers to what my next chapter is yet but I can share the story of this particular chapter finally starting with some of the self-portraits I took over the course of the trip.
I take photos of myself to mark time.
I am fascinated, appalled, and tantalized by the ebb and flow of mortality.
Like this moment in the morning when the sun touched the Greenlandic waters and a heavy wind rushed through the fjord.
Time disappeared completely on this trip.
Temporal matters mattered less and less by the day as the midnight sun lingered on the horizon for hours bathing us in a near permanent twilight.
If anything, I took these just to remember how I felt in these moments: alive, having contemplated the deep losses of my life every night on the fly-bridge: lost loves, lost beginnings, lost ends that I relinquished to the cold night winds that caressed my face.
And here I was - a creature on this planet wind-burnt, hair full of snow and icy-whispers, freckles like pepper sunlight.
In a cold dream of an Earth star, the sun skips along an infinite horizon.
I would ponder the significance of life, grasping towards the wind that whipped through my hair, feeling small tossed about on an ocean of ice before going back to my cabin.
By the end of the trip, I couldn’t fathom leaving the ship.
The sea is an enchanteress.
It tosses you along with its songs to sirens and rocks you to the lullaby of its stories as it’s hues shift from blue to green reflected in the sky’s eyes.
I slept to dream the rest of the moments back into existence.
Like the most beautiful sunset I have every seen in a valley that had rarely been traversed by humans where the sun glistened like diamonds…
Or when we hiked a few hours along the Arctic tundra and ate lichen while the sun played the landscape like a harp.
My lips were cold, kissed by the tiny shards of snow that fell and my eyes were watery but all I can see is the silence that enveloped me; a silence so loud that my thoughts were drowned out.
In Greenland I told myself in this moment that I would never take anything for granted, that I would hug each moment and memory as deep as the ocean before me.
—
It’s 2 in the morning and I am in the Arctic.
I can feel the best parts of me being scattered along the landscapes like ice shards calving off of glaciers.
It’s 2 in the morning.
….and I am still floating in the Arctic.
—-
(part 1 of a series of posts about this trip)
(a huge thanks to the Hadfields especially for being the person responsible for getting us all together for this)
(and a huge thanks to Quark for literally the whole expedition and the ship and the crew and, and, and…everything :) )
—-
(My book releases in all stores worldwide on September 5th)
