On the collaboration between artist intention and audience perception

Congrats on your latest exhibition, Florida Boys. Who do you hope sees your work?

I’ve always thought about my work as pictures I wanted someone like me to find. When I was younger, I rarely saw Florida-specific photographs of young Florida men that felt relevant to me. My hope is that someone who is queer, who feels a little bit uncomfortable or other in their own little world and lives here, might stumble into a Barnes & Noble one day, pick up a book of this work, and feel a sense of belonging.

Compared to when I was growing up, it seems that young people–and specifically young men–are spending more time online and less time outside. I also hope this work reminds people to get outside in nature and play.

Florida’s in the orbit of the climate crisis, and many of the natural landscapes I photograph are facing significant threats. If these pictures, that are fantastical and celebratory, can make people curious to explore and advocate for nature, and hopefully prevent these places from being erased. That’s the dream.

Your work seems to be as much about finding home as it is about Florida specifically. How has your relationship to Florida changed over the years?

Growing up, I was itching to get out. I craved art and culture and being around other artists. As a kid in Miami, it didn’t seem like that was possible. I fell into the classic line of thinking: if I want to experience artists and art and culture, I have to go to New York or Los Angeles. My perspective on Florida was like, get me the fuck out.

But it wasn’t until I left that I came to appreciate what I already had. You don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone. I started returning to Florida to make pictures that felt relevant to what I had experienced. They say when you turn the camera or the lens on yourself, figuratively or metaphorically, you make your most poignant pictures. During the pandemic, I was eager to come home and spend time with family, but I also jumped on this opportunity to move back because Florida had become my muse.

That longing for a sense of belonging and comfort and safety in home drives a lot of my work. I invite other first-generation kids from Miami to go on these trips and create make-believe scenes of comfort, intimacy and play for the sake of the camera. But in the act of photographing, those fantasies become a bit more real, if only for a moment.

How did your upbringing shape the way you see and make work?

Growing up a child of immigrants has influenced my work in ways I’m still learning about. The sense of placelessness and assimilation that’s defined my family for four generations has shaped my worldview.

My father is a doctor and the son of immigrants from Eastern Europe. My mother, whose parents are Iraqi and immigrated to Canada before she was born, is a small business owner, most memorably the owner of a cupcake bakery for which she wore every hat. My father is incredibly driven and my mother is very creative. Neither are artists but their personalities shaped me.

Moving to Florida from Canada at the age of three left me with a profound sense of insider-outsiderness that I’m still making work about.

Did photography feel like a way to make sense of that feeling?

As a kid I wanted to be a filmmaker, but then I picked up a film camera. Photography was a faster way to make something. It didn’t require a full team, a screenplay or financing. It was just me, the camera, maybe a subject. I was using photography as a tool to be in conversation with other artists.

Walk me through your creative process. What’s your typical work day like?

Every day is different. I’m a working photographer, so most of my time is spent on emails with art directors or photo editors–juggling my personal photo work with professional photo work, dusting my negatives, making prints and ordering frames.

The fantasy of the photographer who shoots every day doesn’t apply to me. Maybe 10 percent of my year is shooting. The other 90 percent is pre-production, then post. I’m not the kind of guy that brings their camera everywhere. The camera, for me, is a tool. I take it out when I’m in the tool shed. Which happens to be in nature, in the outdoors, around Florida and rural areas where I like to explore.

You’re as much a director and world-builder, as a photographer.

Growing up as a kid, I felt powerless or a lack of control when surrounded by other young men. I wasn’t the prototypical sports jock type and that made me feel out of place. In my photography, I’m able to gather a group of people and curate a scene or experience for us.

Working in stage narrative gives me control I didn’t have as a kid, or couldn’t have in documentary-style. It allows me to build a world that suits ideas of freedom or utopia–to psychologically address the issues I had as a kid and imagine an alternative.

What’s your process for casting and creating trust?

These trips are built on transparency. I share references, past work and what we’ll be doing. Once we’re on the road, we talk about life, music interests, hobbies, upbringings–and from there, it’s sort of unspoken.

You’re like a camp counselor.

I really feel that way. My camp is awesome. There’s snacks. Everyone’s hydrated. I take care of the people that I work with. Usually they come home from these three-day trips with lifelong friends and core memories.

We all share a similar upbringing being from Miami, and oftentimes as children of immigrants who have never experienced these landscapes before. People cherish these trips because they’re seeing open spaces and beautiful landscapes for the first time. When you’re in nature, comfortable and you’re playing with like-minded people, it can be maybe transformative.

Where do you think that instinct to guide people came from?

I’m most influenced by a mentor of mine, Josh Sobel, who is a filmmaker, artist and art collector. Josh was a counselor at my sleepaway camp. I knew of him but never spent time with him until I was eighteen. I cold DM’d him on Facebook asking to intern. He was living in New York and directing music videos. He agreed, and I spent the summer in the city being exposed to art, his circle of friends, and his film projects.

This was a deeply transformational experience, especially since I never went to art school. I left that summer with a taste of the art life. I met Josh’s art friends, who encouraged me to skip college and move to New York to become an artist. I didn’t take their advice, but I held on to that dream. I kept returning to intern with Josh and his friends in New York then Los Angeles. Those experiences opened my eyes to the life of working artists.

Justine Kurland’s work Girl Pictures was a huge influence and she’s been a mentor over the last five years. Her road trips with young women inspired me to create alternate worlds that I wanted to see–with young men who aren’t the usual rebels or cowboys. Sensitive, curious men who belong in the landscape too.

I also spent a few months working in Ryan McGinley’s studio in New York, organizing and researching his archives. That shaped my practice and gave me insight into how half of downtown New York looks naked.

Your images feel both cinematic and real. How much is planned versus spontaneous?

Much like a film, most of these images are premeditated. I sketch compositions before the trip, but once we’re there, a collaboration begins. The people I photograph bring their own energy and ideas, often more brilliant than mine. I like that I’m not the sole author. I want these pictures to reflect my fantasy of boyhood in Florida, and their genuine reactions to these landscapes they’re visiting for the first time.

It’s more fluid than some stage narrative photography of the past. Gregory Crewdson or Jeff Wall’s elaborate setups were incredibly controlled. I’m borrowing from that lineage and elaborating on it.

Sometimes fiction can reveal more truth or emotion than reality, or even documentary.

I know what you mean. This work that’s really intentionally staged comes out of my own feelings. And there’s more time for people to think about how they feel and what they want out of it, versus someone reacting in the moment to a documentary photographer they meet on the street and asks to take their picture.

I think photography, even documentary photography, is authored in some way. So my thinking is, if it’s all authored, why not go all the way? Why not just have fun with the cinematic, elaborate nature of it all?

It’s up to the viewer to decide how much they want to believe. A fairytale or a movie can teach us truths about life that a history book or documentary sometimes can’t.

There’s a suspension of disbelief. Like seeing the boys climb that round dome in the middle of the sea, or one of the images where a few boys climbed up on the dilapidated billboard. How the hell did they get up there?

I kept driving by that spot on my road trips and dreaming about making a picture there, but never had the balls to do it until I was with a larger group and feeling ambitious. I pulled over and one person scaled the billboard. The rest of the guys wanted to do it too. Almost to my shock, they jumped up there. That was a very magical moment. Now someone will see that [image] and be like, whoa, were these just kids playing around? But it’s also something that’s so fantastical, it’s hard to imagine.

How important is the viewer’s interpretation versus your intention?

The viewer’s interpretation is everything. I make work in a very exploratory way. I go out with a rough idea or limitations, like photographing only groups, outdoors, in natural landscapes, then I make work within those boundaries. My intention is sort of secondary.

Photography can exist in so many contexts–books, online, social media–so an image has to function across all of them. Ultimately the viewer’s interpretation completes the photograph as art. Duchamp said an object only becomes art when an audience perceives it. I subscribe to that wholeheartedly.

It’s powerful how growing up you wanted to escape Miami and now your work is all about coming home and helping other kids feel seen, through the excuse of photography.

It’s a beautiful 180. I was itching to get out, now, I’m itching to stay. I want to advocate for this place and continue exploring it. I credit photography with inspiring me to do that. It’s only because photography allows me to feel comfortable in these landscapes that I’m interested in staying here.

Do you have any advice for emerging photographers seeing past rejections and financial burdens to keep making things?

Photograph what’s close to you and photograph what you love. That proximity and that affection will translate in your pictures and resonate for others.

As an emerging photographer, I’m always reminding myself that for every no, there’s a yes around the corner. Sometimes it takes a hundred no’s to get there, but it’s worth the pursuit.

We’re living in crazy times. Are there rules? What is photography even today? There’s value to working across commercial, editorial and personal contexts. Never underestimate the value of a photography community. I learned so much from assisting other photographers. I still do. I love watching my photographer friends work. You can never be too experienced or too old to assist.