Is it rolling? It's rolling. Okay, good. This is really gonna be good. This is gonna be a good movie.
I consider myself to be a conceptual artist. So that means that the most important things to
me are the ideas and that the actual photographs are secondary to that. So even though I love
photography and the photographs are really important to me, the actual installation and the
ideas behind why the photographs go where they go and how they're made is what's most important.
When I was in my mid-20s I started to do installation work, different kinds of art that I did
outside. I chose to do stuff outside around my neighborhood. Like one thing was two boats colliding,
like two motor boats colliding in a lot in South Philly. So at 30 I decided that I wanted to do this
long-term really big-scale installation under I-95. I just saw it one time. We were just driving under
I-95 and like in my head I just saw how it should be. I just I knew it. So I got a camera and I
started to make photographs that were specific to this installation. It's almost always something
that I just see in the moment. Like I just am just myself. I just always tell them like oh I wanted
to take make a portrait of you. I do this project under I-95. I don't know what's gonna happen with
your portrait but I liked but this is why I wanted to come over and take a picture of you and that's
like that's pretty much it. Sometimes I feel sorry for them. Sometimes I feel angry at them.
Sometimes I feel angry for them. I think the one thing that's in that's common with almost all of
the photographs is that I have a great affection for the subject even though there are so many
other things happening simultaneously. I see myself in all of them. I see specific things in all of
them and there I think that that is that has to be the quality that draws me to somebody. I don't
know. I would never be able to articulate it but I know that that's probably the biggest thing that
actually draws me to be like oh hello what's going on. I think the audience that I'm really
trying to have is just really just people who could randomly walk here like just people from
the neighborhood who will be like oh I'm going to Target. Oh my god what's going on. So there's
always like a million people who are coming up and trying to talk while I'm putting it up and
you know I'm super tired. I don't know what I'm doing. I am delirious. It's pandemonium and here's
how I feel about it. I don't know because I might you might as well be talking to like I don't know
a brick or like a styrofoam cooler at that point the day up. I have no I don't even remember it.
I'm like this. What. I feel like that space has to be the space for the for the show for a lot of
different reasons. It talks a lot about the idea of support. It's literally that the pillars are
supporting a highway in which there's traffic and I think that that's an interesting addition to me
that there's that the pillars are literally supporting something that's moving at great speeds
and that's unaware of the actual support system that's under it when you're driving and the sound
is very important above like the actual sound of the cars hitting slots in I-95. And I wanted it to
be a space where people congregated like teenagers go to drink and homeless people go to sleep and
like just a spot that isn't necessarily used as its intent which is unused where people congregate
to do public things that they're generally not able to do within the parameters of their own
homes or even within their own corners. At three o'clock it's just up people are free to take it
I just leave it so people can either take it or it can stay up for however long it stays up for.
This I my hope was that it would actually some people some people would take some and some would
remain up for at least a day or two following that but this last year it was pretty it was pretty
crowded and so at three o'clock people just started like non-stop tearing the shit off.
I was ready to start stabbing someone right in the face. Part of this is that people can come
and see this stuff it's not like a giveaway free for all like let me get some shit by somebody who
was in the Whitney Biennial which it kind of was this year people saw it as a commodity in some
ways as like something that might be worth money and here's what I have to say. I want to provide
a connection for other people just to see people and places in a different way and so it's important
for me to put myself out there in terms of actually putting places that have deep meaning and things
that are deeply important to me in my life alongside the photos of strangers because it's part of the
continuum it's part of the idea of living in the world and being in the world and the connection
that we have with other people. I'm trying to tell the story of the beauty and struggle of everyday
life and so it's a very epic and expansive story it's not real narrow which is why there's so
many themes in the inclusion of the work and not just heavy on any one particular theme.
Try to have a quick rundown personal history gender addiction and desire American identity
getting by and hope and pride and joy. I take those photos because I love to like I love to see
like it's really I get a lot of pleasure out of just out of vision out of just looking so it has
to be something that's litter that's well thought out but also something that's really about the
pleasure of seeing even if it's a very difficult subject and then it also has to have a very specific
emotional appeal to me. There has to be an emotional connection that I have to making the
photograph and then I also take them because the photos have a place in this installation so I work
on trying to make photos that will that will allow people to kind of make a connection with
other people in the world. Whether it be a difficult thing or a thing that actually is loving.
Here's my audience every person in the world that's why I want to look at my pictures and I'm
totally 100% serious.
