Story Noº 14 / 151: Still in Your Head

Jul 29

Noº 14/151: Still in Your Head
Collection: Parlour Tricks

If you’ve been following this Private Correspondence series, you’ll already know these letters aren’t really about the photograph.

They’re about the obsession that eventually wandered into the studio and took its clothes off.

This one began with something I’ve suspected for years.

Language eventually gives up.

There comes a point where I love you becomes too small for what you’re trying to say.

So you say more.

The song I was listening to while sketching this photograph keeps repeating the same words until they stop being invisible and become physical objects:

I love you more.
More than I ever said before.

Words weigh something.

A sentence can rest against your skin for years.

One conversation can rearrange an entire life.

So, for this photograph, I wanted language to become weather.

Not written.
Released.

The letters aren’t digital effects added afterwards.

I cut every one of them by hand from my favorite typeface, Didot, and we threw them into the air again and again.

The man isn’t falling.
He’s letting himself be overtaken.

I’ve always thought that’s what desire actually feels like.

Not pursuit.
Surrender.

You can’t explain love forever.
Eventually you stop trying.
You simply allow it to happen to you.

People often ask whether my photographs are autobiographical.

They all are.
Just not literally.

This photograph is about what happens when another man occupies your imagination so completely that even the empty space around your body begins to belong to him.

That is much harder to photograph.

Which is exactly why this photograph had to exist.