AGE: 27
BASED IN: Los Angeles
NOMINATED BY: Tyler Mitchell
Photography can become easily consumable, and that idea always scares me. My work is a living archive of places and people, and it’s also a dedication to the language of photography, the mechanics and aesthetic possibilities of the form.
The first image that felt like "mine" was probably a photograph of my father’s customer, Bassam, flexing his arm in front of a tattered, cherry-red wall, which I made in Berlin in 2016. This was the first time I really connected with a camera in the way that felt like an extension of myself. That year was also the closest I ever felt to my father. He bought me film and cameras, and took me to any place or person I wanted to photograph. We never argued, and I was in awe of him and his world.
Inspiration comes from the people I love—seeing the way they move, the way they talk, their tendencies, the way they go about life. What I’ve come to realize is that what’s around me is all I need in order to make photographs. I spent a lot of time early on focusing on people I met in the street and digging further into their lives. But photography has become such an extension of myself and the way I process the world around me, that now it’s difficult to make work about anything that isn’t close to me.
