I aim to document the stories that shape our communities and capture humanity's subtle details. I genuinely believe that the right picture can speak a thousand words in the literal sense.

I began my journey into photography in October ‘23. I bought my first camera off Facebook Marketplace for $300, got a 28mm lens the next day, and then booked a plane ticket to New York City for the following day.

I was mesmerized by street photography in NYC. I watched interviews with contemporary photographers like Trevor Wisecup, Jill Freedman, Matt Weber, and Daniel Arnold on YouTube. The short documentaries on the channel ‘Wrong Side of the Lens’ and the long-form street interviews done by Paulie B in the series “Walkie-Talkie” showed me a world that spoke to me.

I have always felt out of place, so to speak. However, the chaotically loud world of New York City, which I witnessed through my laptop screen, was calling me. In fact, it was teasing me. I could hear it rumble through my speakers and knew I had to be there in person to feel it. The way the photographers were describing their work, the shots they were presenting, and the accuracy of their words used to describe the environment around them began to illustrate in me why I should be there. It was a place where I could be seen and hidden simultaneously. I could escape this feeling of constant non-belonging by using photography as a form of artistic self-expression where my fear of rejection was inexistent, because in the end it is just a photograph.

In short, I bought a camera, flew to NYC and taught myself how to shoot manual on the fly because I fell in-love with photography by watching other people take pictures in that city on the internet. The loud chaotic streets where like a temple. For once in my life, I felt like my mind was slowing down. There was so much happening every second; it almost felt like the world was frozen. Like a typewriter typing at such a high frequency that the sound it makes is just a constant “bbzzzzz”. It felt like soothing whitenoise. With so many people around, I felt unobserved.

That’s what photography does for me. I get to lose myself, to forget about the passenger in this body. I get to focus on the world around me and pick up thousands of tiny scenes of human beauty. I get to capture love, hate, fear, joy, sadness, despair, hope, anger, confusion, etc. all with a scientific instrument (a camera) and get to call it “my art.” In reality, I let life happen to me in those moments. Scenes come and go. Sometimes I decide to shoot them, sometimes I let them go.

Taking pictures for the first time by doing street photography in New York City exposed me to a world I want to belong to. I want to belong to the world of documenting split seconds of existence. I want to create a body of work that 1) demonstrates a creation of artistic expression and growth overtime, 2) documents what it is to be human (like literature that puts words to what it feels like to be heartbroken or in-love), and 3) creates an archive of this present time in history.