Where are you based?
I’m based in Seattle. I’ve
lived here nearly my whole life, with a short stay in Los Angeles in the early 1990s.
I was born in Saigon, Vietnam in the late 1960s, and my family came to the U.S.
to live in my American father’s hometown.
What are you currently working
on?
First, I’ve made some changes
in 2013 which will hopefully give me more time to photograph and write. I’m
working on a fun and exciting photography project being lead by Aik Beng Chia
in Singapore that I can’t say too much about just now. I can say it’s a
challenge, and I’m having fun trying new approaches, tools, etc. on the
project. For the last 3-4 months, I’ve been writing more for others than
myself, on dprConnect and also the AppWhisperer. Those projects are interesting
but I want to spend more time on my creative projects, too. I’m looking for a
publisher for my photo book, Dream Car, which
is a collection of black and white photographs of American cars from the 1960s
and 1970s that I’ve already published via blurb. I’m pulling together Issue No.
4 of Lys
Foto Magazine, the online magazine of mobile art and
photography I co-founded and curated. We’re behind schedule due to my own
hectic January and February, I’m afraid. Look for a new issue in very early
March.
What does photography mean to
you?
Photography is a means of
expression for me. It’s how I know myself and my world better. It’s also a
means for getting to know others, for forging deeper understanding. Photography
also is a deep source of creative satisfaction and pleasure. It’s fun for me to
take and look at photographs.
Describe your work.
I will try. It’s hard to
describe work from the inside like this, from my own perspective, because what
I see, think or feel about the work is limited. You’re just getting my bias
view of my intentions. I’m a storyteller in words and images. I’m a
photographer, when I choose to express myself or tell stories via images. Now
and again, I write poems and essays. My work tends to be essayistic, even the
photography. I prefer to shoot candid street scenes (with and without people)
and do so in natural light with my iPhone, most of the time. I try to take a
direct, simple approach in my photography. I prefer a black and white
aesthetic, often minimal, often with a kind of “grittiness” and mostly
contrasty. My photos aren’t fancy or complicated, but I hope what people
take away or engage with is complex in some way, whether an emotion or an idea.
I’m fond of irony and mood, exploring subjects that are quite plain and
ordinary, and I’m curious about the subjects I find myself drawn to and what
they have to say, especially the inanimate objects I like to photograph.
Your photos have a really fresh
approach, what inspires your work?
Well, I’m pleased to learn you
think the approach is fresh. I’ve been told before that my photography is old
fashioned. I don’t disagree with that statement. But it’s funny to me something that is old is also described as fresh. I’ll think about that contrast.
I’m inspired by photographers, classic and influential people such as Robert
Frank, Stephen Shore, Diane Arbus, Daido Moriyama, Saul Leiter, Helen Levitt,
Lee Friedlander. They are well known and widely influential. But I’m probably
more inspired or influenced by artists outside of photography, particularly
writers, such as Emily Dickinson, Zora Neale Hurston, Walt Whitman, the
American Transcendentalists, William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Langston
Hughes and Gwendolyn Bennet. I think often about Michel Basquiat’s work. I’m
influenced by American folk blues and bebop jazz, and their play between
freedom and confinement in form, structure, theme, and place. It’s what I like
about street photography. For me, it reminds me of jazz rhythms and improvisation.
I’m very much a formalist, so I like to see harmony and balance in composition
and form. That, too, can make me somewhat old fashion, I guess.
Where do you feel most happy
taking photos?
I enjoy taking photographs
outdoors, in the woods or in a city. I’m often moving between our small urban
center here in Seattle and some of the smaller towns or areas that surround us.
So, I like wandering in our small towns, places that look like they may be a
little lost. It doesn’t take much here to go from the high-tech city-center of
Seattle to the rural areas of the Pacific Northwest. A couple of hours in any
direction takes me to small towns and their stories. I like finding things more
than looking for things.
Anyone you would like to plug?
I’ve been following Elif
Suyabatmaz and Louise Fryer and have always loved Amy Fichter’s work. I love
Amy’s photography.
What's next for you?
I’m working hard to get the
next issue of Lys Foto Magazine out and find enough time to dive deep into my
photography. I have a few documentary ideas I need to workout, explore before I
try to shoot them, and I have a project I need to wrap up, too. They’re all
good things to keep me busy. I’m in the middle of the winter semester at the
college where I teach writing and literature, so I have plenty to keep me
busy. I teach at Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle.
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This image is 35mm film, shot with Olympus OM-1. The rest are iPhone photos.
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