As part of my 365 challenge in 2024 (a photograph a day with a large format camera) I have also made it a goal of mine to take 100 unique portraits. Quickly, I photographed everyone I knew and began to walk up to complete strangers once a day to become their acquaintance for 15-20 minutes. We talked about common interests and we made a special and unique moment a timeless one with a large format camera… Here are these 100 portraits.
8x10 inch large format view camera portraits using traditional and alternative process techniques.
San Francisco
Pacific Ocean
Beijing
It’s difficult to cull through thousands of negatives to find a narrative retroactively. However, after a few years of street photography the themes and narratives blur together into one big picture. Individual snapshots are an oddity in their own and even more cryptic when paired with images from a completely different unrelated motif.
The photographs here are candid photographs with no original direction, but ended up being spontaneous, memorable, and rewarding to photograph.
“Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst.”
“Do you feel that?” I asked my friend, Sheldon, as we were walking side by side to the school library.
I touched his cheek with the back side of my left hand. Hoping that he also felt the slight tingle that I was silently questioning to myself.
”Uh, yeah.” He responded as if I was stupid or something. Even at ten years old, I remember thinking how idiotic it must sound to have me ask that question. Obviously he could not feel what was going on inside my body.
This memory of asking Sheldon if he could feel my hand is the first memory of my epilepsy disorder. At ten years old, it was still in its infancy and I could only feel a slight tingle in my left hand. This feeling came and went on occasion, but progressed into a life altering and
In 2019 and 2020 I underwent corrective brain surgery to locate and remove a piece of my brain that was not functioning correctly. It’s difficult to summarize 20 years in a few lines of text, but at the age of 10, I was diagnosed with an epilepsy disorder. After 20 years the symptoms became dreadfully worse despite the increase in medication and breakthrough medical procedures. Finally, at the age of 32 years, my doctor suggests to participate in a new procedure that has the potential to put and end to the seizures once and for all.
I documented this life changing experience in the hospital and rehabilitation center with a 35mm camera. I took over 200 photographs and and made a few notes and drawings.
I asked for my camera and turned my lens to myself the moment I woke up from a very long, very exhausting surgery.
Mitchell's Journey Thus Far (A Facebook post by my mom)
Out of all the photographs I took, this self portrait impressed me the most. Taken with a large format camera, I asked my girlfriend to bring me my 4x5 inch camera and a single film holder I loaded months ago. I fought with my whole body to keep my head up and since this was days out of brain surgery. While the memories of those other photographs fade with time, this one seems to stay permanent.
I continue to take self portraits on the same day (January 12) of this moment in rehab. Since then I have used the heavy large format camera as a meditation and tool to build mental and physical strength. I could barely walk in early 2020 and now I feel like no mountain is too high, nor horizon too far for my view camera. I consider my brain surgery a rebirth, and with that rebirth I strive to become twice the man I was before.
By 2019 I was taking maximum dose of 3 medications, but still having multiple small seizures daily, with full body (grand-mal) seizures occurring every week or two. This operation changed my life. The seizures have ceased. My medication intake has dramatically decreased. I can get a full nights sleep. I can think clearly. I count the days, weeks, months, and years that I stay seizure free. I look onward to a more fully lived life.
In 2020, I was reborn. Now I am alive.
I dedicated about 2 years of my life and art practices to learn how to paint in the traditional Chinese style. With ink, inkstone, brush, water, and paper, I started to paint and draw calligraphy. At the same time I was learning to speak Mandarin by taking courses in school. Later in life, I would go on to travel to Beijing regularly with my wife. These are a small collection of works I did as a white, western, American embodying the teachings and methods of master painters from the oldest and longest surviving culture thriving today.
