1993-2001 | Gallery E – Inye Wokoma • Artist

Sunrise to Sunset | Verite

“Collins Automotive” | 1997

Here is something that was common in my early days of photography that I don’t talk much about. There was a constant anxiety that shaped my experience as an emerging photographer. I was young, broke, eager, passionate, curious, and driven. I wanted to shoot all the time but felt hindered by intersecting forces. I typically didn’t have much film to shoot and always wanted to make the most of every frame. I wanted to go out and wander and shoot, but worried shooting randomly would be a waste of precious resources. This was before I began my wider study of 20th century street photographers, like Harry Callahan and Henri Cartier-Bresson. I wasn’t confident enough in myself or knowledgeable enough about the possibilities of street photography to trust myself. There was nothing more disappointing to me in those days than returning from a photographic excursion only to struggle to find one frame that moved me. As a result there were many afternoons when I languished in my own anxiety. To soothe these tensions I would browse sleeves of

negatives, holding up frames in the sunlight that I couldn’t afford to print and imagining what they would look like when I finally could.

On those days I found myself wishing I had chosen a different creative path, painting perhaps. Anything I could pick up and throw myself into at a moment’s notice without so much worry about cost and possible regret.

Conversely, there were days that were like magic. Days when I would go out without much expectation and return with multiple images that felt transformational. Images that, even when only looking at them as negatives in the sunlight, made me weepy with a sense of joy and possibility. The images in this gallery were captured on days like those. These were days when I trusted myself, ignored my meager resources, and went out into the world to see what was there. Over time I began to trust myself enough to find these images on, or near my own door stoop. Over time I learned to keep my camera loaded and ready for that moment when I would get an itch, or when I looked up and realized something incredibly common and beautiful was unfolding before me. These are images that surprised me because each, in their own ways, were unplanned. Somewhere between sunrise and sunset, on long, slow days, I would decide to trust myself to go out and create something, find something, or let something find me. On those days when photography seemed like a distant possibility, suddenly it became an inevitability.