Kaizen
Ralph Gibson has no idea that he saved my life.
My life was in chaos when I read this interview:
(Ralph Gibson)
“Well, Larry (Clark), Mary Ellen (Mark), and I all hit New York at the same time within months of one another, and we very quickly became friends and very involved and knew each other all our lives. We respected one another's work. It was very different, but we knew that we were working from the inside out. You see, there was the kind of photographer who mastered craft and shared his mastery of craft with other photographers who mastered craft. But then, if you understood certain things about the medium, it reflected in the work. You could see that in the work. An insider is somebody who photographs from the inside out, he's not an observer. He's a participant making it personal.”
It took reading those words from one of my idols to understand that I not only needed to photograph from the inside out, but perhaps more importantly, live from the inside out. If I could somehow simplify the cacophony of thoughts and ideas in my head, my work and what I shared with others could improve.
There is a Japanese word “Kaizen” that is translated as Kai (positive) and Zen (thoughtfulness) and results from taking small steps which eventually lead to significant improvements.
I began to focus and create images that were from careful observation, thinking deeply about what I was seeing. In this series, which I named “Kaizen,” I have tried to make photographs and tell tiny stories with magical properties based on the lighting and reality of the moment, and to show how I see the world, from the inside out.
