Info
Photographer and editor working between Miami and New York. Street work in black and white, colour when the colour is the subject, and short-form film for clients the rest of the time.
Practice
I closed a studio to end up here.
In a studio you build the picture. You set the light, you place the person, you decide in advance what the moment is going to be, and then you ask them to perform it. It works. It also comes out lifeless, and after enough years of that I could see it in everything I made.
The street took the building away. I do not photograph people. I photograph an expression, and whatever the world happened to put behind it. The person is not the subject, and if these read to you as portraits of strangers, look again at what is around them.
The city does not matter either. What matters is that I am present, that the image is already there waiting to be taken, and that I have the front row seat for it. Be there, be ready, be close enough. That is the whole of it.
Owlkrown is the other thing I build, and it is built for other people. This is not. The photographs are mine first, and after that they belong to anyone who wants to come along for the ride and be a witness to what I saw.
I am not going to tell you what any of them mean. You surface inside a moment I stood in, and what you take from it is yours. A different story every time you look, if you want one.
And then the rush, which is the part I cannot explain away. The superpower to freeze a moment, their moment, and keep it. I have never got enough of it.
Roughly three quarters of it is monochrome, decided before the shutter rather than applied afterwards. That is what the journal mostly circles around.
Tools
Digital: Leica M11 Monochrom, M11-P, SL3, Fuji X100VI, Leica D-Lux 8. Film: 35mm, colour negative and black and white, developed and scanned, grain left where it fell.
No lighting, no setups. Available light, and whatever the street is already doing.
Prints
Frames from The Wait and Against the Light are available as pigment prints on ILFORD GALERIE Smooth Pearl, signed, in a numbered edition of twelve. The Strangers street portraits are shown here but not sold.
- 8×12 in, edition of 12
- 12×18 in, edition of 12
- 20×30 in, edition of 12
Other sizes, papers and framing on request. Ordering is handled directly for now, send the chapter and the caption line under the frame you want.
Contact
Print enquiries, commissions, workshops, editing work, or a question about a frame.
InstagramYouTubeTikTok@gastonshutters on all three
Owlkrown, my camera-accessory brand, is at owlkrown.com.
Based in Miami. In New York regularly, if a commission is there, say so and we'll line it up with a trip.