Because the frame is the only place I know how to tell the truth.
You decide who will appear in Artforum Magazine, take home $25,000, and display their work at The Art of Elysium's Salon!
Documentary work — real people, real stories, the kind that unfold in front of you rather than get built in a writers' room. I'm most alive behind a camera when the subject forgets it's there and something true slips out. That's what I'm always chasing.
Where do you find inspiration?Old photographs, typewritten pages, the patina on something that's been used for decades. Things that carry time in them.
What would you do with $25,000?I'd make a documentary project, both as a film and also a photography series, about a person or group navigating something hard — illness, loss, reinvention — the kind of person who doesn't think their story is worth telling until someone shows up with a camera and proves otherwise. That moment, when a subject realizes they matter enough to be documented, is why I make films. This money would let me do that without a client, without a brief. Just the work.
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