“3.99”

(first) - “Kinko’s”

My brother, Chase, 24, wearing my owlhat and our father’s Kinko’s sweater. We drove up and down a Big Hill, searching for our aunt’s missing dog who had bolted that morning. An enormous, dry skeleton of a spring tree had been cut out of the ground, unceremoniously left for dead by the side of the road. As we climbed up the slope, I asked him if he would stand still for a second so I could make a photo of him. Classically, charmingly, he could not. I decided that the mid-sentence, mid-scratch snap was much better than a sanitized, posed photo would have been.

(second) - “Marathon Gas”

About thirty minutes later, we stopped at Marathon Gas Station to refill our grandmother’s 1992 Ford Explorer and to buy a case of Modelos. Outside, two female bikers approached me to compliment the colour of my hair. I loved the shape of their bikes and their space-earth suits, asking timidly if I could make a photo of them. A smile and a nod, three or four clicks of my camera, a thank you and they were off. As they turned to leave, I raised my camera again, resulting in this image. In the background, with his backwards cap and vampiric paleness, my brother Chase looking out toward the Big Hill. Another strange Arizonan dreamscape.

(third) - “Chlorine”

The thanksgiving that I made this photo was spent predominantly alone, in an emptying house on Cowell Lane. One evening, driving between my old dorm and new, I noticed one streetlamp that shone brighter than its neighbours. I was taken by the chlorine-white light, and urgently enlisted my friend Iyanu to take a walk with me after dinner. Stopping at the light, I instructed her to take a photograph of me - one of the only times I’ve been the subject of a photo. Not sure why. I’m not averse to it. As the shutter snapped close, a mindless exhalation formed into an apparition, a spirit-form escaping my lungs.