You Are I Am

About a month ago, I helped with a small portion of a show at Open End Gallery. Many months prior to this, I met up with You Are Beautiful and kicked around some ideas for collaboration. We came up with the idea of having stickers with “I AM” printed on them, allowing visitors to fill out the rest. I, for my part, would then photograph each person as they came in.

I apologize if I’m repeating things on here, but I’m fascinated with repetition and variations. I’m of the mind that 100 pictures of anything will automatically be captivating, as the eye will be drawn to the differences between each image. Contrary to what you’d think, the similarities between each picture fade into the background, and the variants are what stand out.

I’m really happy with the way things came out with these photos. I was able to get closeups of each person’s sticker, as well as some decent shots of each individual. I love how each individual image says so much about that person’s personality, their mood at the time, how much it reveals about them. And on top of that, we get the written description of what they’re thinking or feeling.

At turns, there are some playful messages, some silly ones. But there are also a few that really caught me off guard, brave images, revealing images, vulnerable ones. In many respects, the written image shows us a side of each person that you can’t see from their portrait.

I hope you get as much fun out of viewing this as I had, creating it.

You Are I Am.