Horses

Inspired by Patti Smith & Robert Mapplethorpe.

When I was a child, I had a dream: I was in a concrete room, looking in towards the corner. There in the center of a room was a glass cube with two people moving in it. The dream would return over the years, the only thing to change were who was in the cube.

I spent my early years in my father’s studio, listening to opera and learning about being an artist. I fought that urge for years, only to be brought back into it’s folds violently my seventeenth year.

I found my way to photography and printmaking when my leg was healing and my heart was hurt. It listened to my pains and found a new voice. I never stopped letting that voice speak.

The things we think are important, never tend to be. It’s the things that leave a mark on us in strange ways that always seem to make themselves the star.

I came to modeling the same way I come to most things, I suppose: by accident. After the second accident, I started shooting self portraits, thinking they were just going to jump start my creativity after my father passed and give me a connection back to my camera, nothing else. I found purpose again in the isolation and exploration.

After a year and a half of shooting them, I had to leave my job for health reasons. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do, just that I had gone completely off the deep end mentally and physically and needed a break to re-group. Someone convinced me to step in front of their camera. One led to another and my 'I am only going to do this a few months for fun then find a real job' statement of January 2013 laughed in my face.

I found myself traveling the US, then Canada, then Europe. Covered in dirt, oils, blood, and even once the juices of a European Eagle, conveniently thawing out and dripping body fluids down my back. I found myself with people who fetishized me, with people who lifted me up, and with those who believed in my own powers. I used the life I found myself in to pursue my own photography further- if you are going to travel and meet all those people, you may as well be selfish about it and use it for your own terms.

I still think back to the people in the cube. To the shattered bones and broken hearts that led me on this journey. I think of Patti and Robert’s little blue star, of the pursuit of one’s dreams and the ways we achieve them. I think of the image and the connection.

Maybe I just think in dreams. After all, I’m still just a kid.

Model: Jacs Fishburne
Makeup: Tennille Makeup Artistry