Projects
Cramped Up On The Learning Curve, 2020 - 2025
Cramped Up On The Learning Curve is an analog photographic project, started in the summer of 2020 when fourteen of my closest friends and I all turned eighteen and graduated from high school in San Francisco. During a time when our lives were promised to start, the pandemic caused everything to come to a full halt and we found ourselves navigating these early moments of adulthood in an awkward and uncomfortable way.
The title of this project is pulled from Fiona Apple’s Valentine, in which she sings “I’m a tulip in a cup / I stand no chance of growing up… I cramped up on the learning curve” – lyrics which, to me, applied to the stunted early adulthood experienced by my friends and I.
In the five years since this project has started, I’ve lived in San Francisco, San Diego, London, and New York, following my instinct to document with every resettle. I’ve photographed our nights out, sponsored by our fake IDs, cooking dinner in our very first apartments, road trips to lakes an hour from home and ferry rides five thousand miles away, the beginning of new love, and the painful setbacks that have landed us in hospitals, trying to figure out how to take care of one another.
I’m twenty three now, reflecting on half a decade of my life, the first years of my adulthood, and a full development from the life I felt was stripped from me when the pandemic hit. The making of Cramped Up On The Learning Curve made me realize that we didn’t actually cramp up that summer – we did alright, everything considered. We figured it out.
Members Only, 2024 - 2025
The Banatul Folklore and Soccer Club has existed in Ridgewood since 1968, serving as a bar and social hall to patrons and families of diverse Eastern European backgrounds. Social clubs provide a sense of belonging in a city like New York, populated with over eight billion people.
Eastern European social clubs have existed as a means of fostering a sense of familiarity for immigrants for centuries, and the Banatul is doing exactly that – it is a constant in an ever changing city. In a city where new bars, restaurants, and clubs are constantly opening to serve a new generation of New Yorkers, the Banatul is preserving a piece of old New York and traditions from communities thousands of miles away. For over half a century now, the club has existed to provide a space where Romanian folk dance is taught to children, Serbian liquors are served, and English is the minority language. A very specific culture is preserved in this building, and I am documenting that.
Members Only is an observant photo series shot on film as a nod to the preservation of a previous time period. In order to become familiarized with the people and the space of the Banatul, I’ve been spending my Fridays there since October 2024 – the bar is only open one to two times a week. I’ve been around to photograph for the preparation of weddings in the hall, for the Christmas party, birthdays, to watch the kids practice, to play foosball with the over 50s soccer team, and to simply be a part of the community. This project’s goal is simple – to contribute to the preservation of this community, to document them as they are now, because things change.