The Passing Frame
The human drive to create has always captivated me, just as deeply as our haunting impulse to destroy what we’ve built. It’s a paradox baked into who we are: this urge to shape something meaningful from the void, while often struggling not to undo it. It speaks of agency. Of transcendence. Of that strange, stubborn will to bring light out of chaos.
Sometimes, I wonder if this creative ache is a clue. Maybe even a sign that we, too, were created. Rick Rubin says creativity isn’t rare; it’s fundamental.1 Amie McNee calls it the missing pillar of self-development—a force that restores agency in a chaotic world.
I’m reminded of Genesis 1:2, where the Spirit of God hovers over the waters—over the formless, the empty, the dark. In Hebrew, the word hovering carries the sense of brooding, like a bird nesting, nurturing something not yet seen. A deep intention to bring something into being. Out of emptiness: purpose. Out of nothing: form. Out of chaos: light.
As a photographer—or as Joel Meyerowitz once called it, a collector of moments—I find myself doing the same. I follow light. Chase it. Hunger after it. It draws me toward the interstices of life—the quiet, often overlooked spaces where light brushes the surface and something within me stirs in response. That’s what this space is: a virtual field notebook. A record of my encounters with light and life.
Susan Sontag once wrote, “Photography may be more memorable than moving images because they are a neat slice of time…”2 A photograph doesn’t just capture—it distills. It lets a moment linger in the air between us. I’ve come to believe that a moment transforms once it’s framed. It begins to carry weight. Meaning. Even if the exact instant is gone, the image becomes a vessel—something that evokes, that connects my inner world with yours.
In that sense, photographing isn’t just about documenting. It’s about revealing. About showing a truth that lives in the gut, not the headlines. Sean Tucker says it best: all good art must tell the truth—not facts, but the kind of Truth you feel.
“…the key ingredient in all good art is that it has to tell the Truth, and I don’t mean a series of dry facts… The Truth it talks about is the existential, capital ‘T’ Truth, which we human beings intuit but can rarely voice… But regardless of the content, the best art rings True, and that’s why it vibrates within us when we view it, taste it, hear it, or touch it.”3
Maybe that’s why I’d still make photos even if I were the last person on Earth. But I’m not. My truth in a frame is only half the story. The other half? That begins with you.
Once an image is in front of you, it’s yours. Your own memories, emotions, and associations begin to stir. Ruth Ozeki wrote, “In reality, every reader, while he is reading, is the reader of his own self.” I believe the same holds true for photography. Yes, there’s something of me in what I choose to capture—but the meaning you take from it? That belongs to you. As Rick Rubin reminds us in The Creative Act, creativity is a collaboration between the artist and the viewer.
So in this space, I won’t pretend to dictate meaning. My aim is simply to share—and through that act of sharing, I hope something stirs. Something you recognize, or perhaps never noticed before.
What lingers isn’t just the image, but what it calls forth in you.
This isn’t meant to be a gallery. It’s an invitation.
To see. To feel. To remember.
And above all, to witness what happens when someone chooses to follow the light, and even sing.
“To sing, you must first open your mouth. You must have a pair of lungs, and a little knowledge of music. It is not necessary to have an accordion or a guitar. The essential thing is to want to sing. This then is a song. I am singing.”
— Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer
in·spi·ra·tion
To be inspired is to breathe in—to take in the world and let it germinate something within us. Each breath fuels creativity, helping us shape something from nothing, to find rhythm and meaning in the chaos of life.
But to be truly inspired, we have to empty ourselves first—to acknowledge our limitations, to admit we don’t already know. After all, how can we learn if we think we already understand?
Inspiration flows from many sources—people, both living and long gone. I find it in nature, in music, in books and paintings, in conversations, and of course, in the work of other photographers.
Below is a list of those who have moved me and continue to. I hope you’ll explore their work when you get a chance. Who knows? Maybe something they saw, heard, or felt will speak to something in you, too.
Why subscribe?
The subscription is free, but if you want to get full access to the newsletter and publication archives.
Rick Rubin, The Creative Act: A Way of Being (New York: Penguin Press, 2023).
Susan Sontag, On Photography (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1977).
Sean Tucker, The Meaning in the Making: The Why and How Behind Our Human Need to Create (2021), pp. 14-15.
