The Journal

Unguarded

The most honest portraits are never planned — they are harvested from the in-between moments, the ones we don’t notice until later.


We began the session at 9 am with the subject completely composed — a version of themselves prepared for the camera. That version is always interesting and always slightly wrong.

By the second hour something had loosened. They were telling me about their mother. They had forgotten, I think, that I was still shooting.

The frame I returned to was made during a pause in conversation. They were looking at nothing in particular. Their hands were doing something without being directed. Their face was doing nothing at all.

That nothing is everything.