Reportage
A Great Gay Book
"Over the course of the next week and a half, Steven and I grew closer, and I shot a few pictures of him. The best ones were taken those first few days when I had no idea what I was doing. I was not sloppy as much as I was naïve and searching for a picture that would describe this new space that had opened up between the two of us. Watching Steven perform in front of my viewfinder felt right. He was a familiar foreigner. He seemed to be as curious about me as I was about him. Our picture sessions were like the first few dates of a promising relationship. We offered ourselves up wholly to the other person without concern or mediation. It was the safest I had felt with another man in a long time."
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a selection from the essay, "He Opened Up Somewhere Along the Eastern Shore" which first appeared in Issue 05 of Hello Mr. Magazine and has recently been collected in the 2024 coffee table book: A Great Gay Book: Stories of Growth, Belonging & Other Queer Possibilities.
The Bay Area Reporter: #TRANSHEALTHFAIL
Trans man endures fraught process for surgery
"Trans man endures fraught process for surgery," is the story of an Oakland man, Eliot Daughtry, who transitioned from female to male 23 yrs ago. 8 years ago, Daughtry started requesting a hysterectomy for medical reasons. After being denied by three different insurance agencies, I picked up the story in the middle of September and started reporting on Daughtry's long and traumatic journey.
The 4,300 word feature article was published on the front page of The Bay Area Reporter on December 17, 2015 and online at ebar.com. For this article, I wrote the profile and shot the images.
The Hidden Worlds of Homeless Women
When interviewing a homeless woman in Spring 2016, she shared that she had to trade her body to a group of men for protection while she slept.
Her story haunted me and when I arrived in Los Angeles to work on Virtual Reality projects at the Los Angeles Times, I knew that I wanted to find a way to expand the dialogue around the experience women have when living on the street. This 360VR interview series is the culmination of that reporting.
The Olympian
In the spring of 2018, I gave a lecture on Courage to the San Francisco chapter of Creative Mornings. After the talk, Elizabeth Swaney approached me and asked for tips on personal storytelling. I offered a few and then asked her about her story. She shared that she was a 2018 Winter Olympian.
Having never met an Olympian before, I was intrigued and so we exchanged contact information and met for coffee the following week.
A quick google search of Elizabeth’s name produced a series of (mostly) unflattering headlines about her performance at the 2018 Games but something didn’t seem right. The character being drawn in the profiles that had been published didn’t match the woman that I met after the lecture or in subsequent coffee conversations.
In Fall 2018, I pitched the story to Pop Up Magazine and was invited to join their 2019 Winter Tour with the story “The Olympian,” a profile on Elizabeth which explored her past, road to the Olympics, and the disparity between how male and female athletes are treated when they don’t meet our performance expectations.
Critical Military Studies
In the Spring of 2015, Routledge launched a new academic journal titled "Critical Military Studies." I was invited to be one of the first artists to present a series of photographs as well as a peer reviewed essay in the Journal.
To download a pdf of the essay, clickhere.
THE LOS ANGELES TIMES: VOICES OF PRIDE IN THE FACE OF VIOLENCE
Armed with just a phone, I made the portraits and conducted the audio interviews. To check out the article, click here.
Angelenos swallowed their fears and joined the L.A. Pride parade on Sunday, calling the celebration a refutation to the mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Florida and a show of solidarity.