The photographs in my series, “A Hidden Tableau,” are the opening shots of all the films I never made. Mysterious and deceptive and strange and beautiful. A colorful collection of obstacles, pathways, frames and landscapes left unfinished. Many of my favorite elements of cinema, standing in for the real thing, then becoming a thing of their own.
“Prepare as if everything can and will collapse around you.”
– Forgotten Instructor Name, MFA Film Producing Class
The false promise of attending an elite film school never paid off for me in the way I hoped it would. Auteur ambitions squashed by financial realities, luck that broke the wrong way and (maybe most importantly) an inability to harness the kind of delusional self-confidence that people who manage to crack through the walls of the indie film world all seem to share.
CUT TO:
EXT. MOODY CITY STREET – NIGHT
But the dream is not quite dead. Seventeen years post-MFA, the work continues, one shot at a time. Filmic visions worked out on city streets with just a camera and shoe leather, moving and dreaming at my own pace.
“Subtle to the point of inscrutable”
– [Name Redacted], MFA Film Directing Class Critique Session
Every shot in a film communicates meaning that contributes to a larger whole. This is how I approach still photography. Shot by shot, still images in conversation with each other through careful sequencing, viewers filling in the gaps with their own experience and perspective.
This is my filmography.