I am working on a long-term project to talk to the people who own and run local businesses, the people who make our community unique and real, and to photograph them at work. Rather than a set of portraits, I want to focus on their hands because they tell the story of their efforts. And I want to talk to the people, to listen to their experiences.
The last year has highlighted just how fragile our communities are, as we watch shops that have been around sometimes for years close and go away. I worry about what we are losing. So this project is very much one of preservation. An effort to record in words and images what we have before it’s gone.
In my mind I imagine a project that echoes the form of Dorothea Lange’s American Exodus. She paired photographs with words in a powerful way to capture the experiences of people heading west in the hopes of finding a better life. But I work more local. With people I know or want to know.
In the end I will produce a book that collects together these photographs and experiences, that joins words and images to tell a story about the community where I live. I will also produce photographs for each person/business, sometimes large format single photographs, sometimes collages or triptychs. They are free to do with those photographs whatever they want. It’s the least I can do for those who let me come sit and listen to them while they work.
Here is a small sample of some recent photographs, taken at a local bike shop while I listened to the owner talk about opening it and finding ways to keep it going over the past 14 or so months. I imagined them as a set of poster-sized prints for the shop.