9 months after the twin towers fell my family moved from the dry deserts of Tucson, Arizona to the gum speckled pavement of Brooklyn, New York. A week before we left Tucson I asked my mom to cut off my rat’s tail—I was going to be a city kid.
But from the drop I felt like an outsider. I had no roll, no reason to be there—I should just fuck off. Then one high school summer I found photography and with a camera in my hand I had an excuse to exist. It was not until much later in life that I realized I hadn't needed one in the first place.
This collection of images were taken in my late teens and early twenties. Many of the people pictured here are those I once considered friends but are now lost to me—alcohol, drugs, mental illness and death—or just lost though life. Several others were never friends in the first place. And others were only fleeting faces.
This project continues to morph as I dig through my archive of dusty, forgotten negatives—revealing the fragility of youth, and memory.
Lost in New York
