More akin to astral codes of conduct..

Traveling and photography are both steeped in superstition. They are surrounded by talismans, curses, amulets, spells and sacrifice. They are submerged in the occult and their knowledge is esoteric and they only give up their secrets with time and to the devoted. Traveling and photography inhabit an elemental world not subject to the same physical laws of the cosmos and these forces are more akin to astral codes of conduct than anything else; They can influence the natural laws around us, but they do not ultimately have control; They are fickle and mutable and driven by invisible wills and once upon a time they would have been described as the ancestors and the secret spirits inside of all things. 

These subtle energies manifest themselves in our material world as the unexpected and the anomaly and they are present in every photograph that we have ever loved and they have helped bring all of them into being.

I suppose we could simply call this luck, or our photographic instinct. That thing we feel in our gut, that we trust, which sharpens with our experience. But, when we find ourselves standing out on a busy city street corner with camera in hand, we will all be secretly praying we have generated the necessary conditions for these super-natural forces to ignite then intervene; A pool of holy light illuminating the lone pensive girl at the cross walk, or a sudden gust of wind which lifts hats, skirts and hands together. Their presence is the name of the hope we all hold close. 

These forces are chaotic/neutral and they are to be respected and regarded in the same way as weather. Although they can be bargained with to a certain extent, they cannot be owned or claimed wholly for ourselves as ourselves. Such assumptions of control and possession run the risk of us being completely abandoned by them altogether, leaving us with nothing but our technical ability and our precious gear. 

Each morning before a day of driving I have already gone through a quiet pantomime of prayers and rituals before I have turned the key in the ignition. I don’t always make a song and dance about it, but instead my workings aspire to be more methodical, like a photoshop workflow of quiet focused attention. Like the Catholics or a Scorpio. Layered mindful steps deliberately taken, one after the other with intention. This is how I can be seen, standing outside my room at The Twin Pines Motel in Flagstaff, Arizona, at dawn, patting myself down, pretending to look for my car keys, but subtly crossing myself with a Rosary and whispering a secret order of words under my bandanna into the amethyst that is tucked into my left hand. 

Happy New Year.