Thank You. Here’s What Comes Next.
I genuinely did not expect to receive much support from my recent emails.
The kindness and generosity that have come my way over the last several days have been truly uplifting. Watching the narratives being spun online while living through something very different in real time has caused a lot of whiplash—though, honestly, that is not entirely unlike what I had been doing myself over the last several months.
I never wanted to be the boy who cried wolf, so I tried to pretend things were not as dire as they were. I kept waiting to call wolf until I knew the wolf was actually at the door. Haven’t we all been there at some point?
The personal responses I have received have been very different from much of the commentary on social media. The internet did its thing. I only wish we could have received a fraction of that visibility before Bushwick Community Darkroom had to close. Still, the support I have received since the closure has given me something I have not had in a long time: room to breathe. It has helped me cover immediate expenses. More importantly, it has allowed me to reset and begin imagining a life after the darkroom.
Returning to my own work
Before I spent nearly all of my time keeping Bushwick Community Darkroom running, I was a photographer. Around 2019, back in the warehouse, I made a collection of approximately thirty one-of-one, 8 × 10-inch silver gelatin black-and-white landscape prints. Every print was made by hand in the darkroom. There are no editions and no duplicate prints. Each one is its own object. I am now making that collection available through my personal website:
Each print purchased before September 1 will be priced at $250 and will include a handwritten note from me sharing a memory about where, when or why the photograph was made. On September 1, any remaining prints from the collection will increase to $350, and I will release a new collection of one-of-one photographs.
This is not a fundraiser disguised as an art sale
It is me beginning, finally, to make room for my own work.
Purchasing a print is a way to support my rebuilding while receiving something tangible that I made with my own hands. It is also a small but significant step toward becoming an artist again—not only the person responsible for keeping an entire institution alive. I am still adding photographs to the shop, and the collection will continue to grow over the coming days.
There will eventually be other projects, collaborations and opportunities to make photography accessible outside the structure of Bushwick Community Darkroom. I am not ready to announce all of that yet. For now, what comes next is simple:
I am making my photographs available. I am giving myself time to breathe. And I am beginning to imagine a future that leaves room for my own work.
A note about the fundraiser
The GoFundMe created around the darkroom’s closure is separate from the direct support I have personally received.
We still have not received a public accounting of how the money collected through that fundraiser has been handled. I continue to believe that the people who donated deserve a clear and public explanation. I will address that issue separately.
This post is about something else: the people who reached out directly, purchased work, sent support, shared kind words and reminded me that there might still be a future on the other side of this. Thank you for giving me the space to return to being an artist.