Portrait of Afradet. Finding a style by looking backward.

Afradet Z.

Sometimes I feel lost or untethered from my career in photography. I wonder what the heck I'm doing with all these cameras and all these lenses. As I age there are fewer jobs I want to do. Fewer times I want to torture test my patience at the hands of an unfocused but well panicked client. And sometimes I lose the strings that bind together what I've come to consider as my personal style of photography. 

Usually this cognitive haze is swept away by some new and challenging assignment that keeps my mind occupied and distracted but sometimes the clutch of indifference and malaise linger for days or weeks. When I feel most adrift I take time to go through old files and old boxes of work I enjoyed doing, and images I enjoyed making. I almost always come to the same conclusion: I love making portraits of interesting people.

The recent arrival of the second Leica CL was a pleasant distraction for a day or so. But I still felt unsettled. So I went back to my source of re-inspiration and started pulling images out of the nooks and crannies of the digital library on my desk and really examining them. Trying to divine what it was about each image that moved me to revisit it. And to find joy in it. What I came away with is the realization that I love the process of sitting quietly with people and waiting for them to reveal something both special and at the same time universal about themselves that shapes an expression in a moment. To freeze an emotion, a feeling, a glance, a gaze and a shared moment of mutual recognition that can never reoccur in the same way again. To suspend the slow decay of time and existential stability that is such an illusion. 

I first met Afradet when we casted for an advertising campaign. She was just right for one of the parts the ad agency and I envisioned. She had an energy that made images with her in them both realistic and at the same time distinctly a step up from routine documentation. She supplied a spark in the construction of what would otherwise be a routine corporate photograph meant to show off the kinds of people a company aspired to have in real life. An aspirational image for H.R.

After the project was over and time passed I reached out to her to see if she would come into the studio and sit for a portrait. She came by one evening, after dinner.  Once again there was that energy but also a sense that her life contained uncertainty and no little quotient of angst. I think it comes across in this photograph. 

We talked and photographed for hours. 

And then, as in so many other encounters in life, we moved back to our separate existences and whatever brought us together to share our non-commercial portrait session was over. But the images remain for me as both a reminder of the person but also a reminder that those people are constantly changing and coming into and out of our orbits. 

The best portraits come from momentary infatuations. Glancing affection. Admiration. But that's why so many commercial portraits can't help but fail. There's no bridge.