Concept means a great deal to me when executing any creative effort, and with that comes a reliance on planning and structure. However, I can admit that spontaneity has its merits, and for that reason I chose to shoot my latest project without any premeditation. I took advantage of a weekend trip to Philadelphia, a place I had never visited, by using the foreign terrain as a workspace for a project with no formal guidelines. Instead of clinging to an idea, I played the part of the tourist, snapping pictures of things that caught my eye. The results of the trip were intriguing because they yielded a consistency that I was entirely unconscious of while shooting. I tended to draw my attention to the loneliness present in populated spaces, more specifically on and around the local SEPTA trains.
Train stations are little more than a place of transition: hundreds of people--commuters, travelers, students--convene in one of several locales around the city for a few minutes at a time as they wait for a connecting ride to anywhere else. This connection is what interests me in retrospect; the fact that most people do not want to be at, say, a train station, but they rely on it to get somewhere more desirable. Thus, an abundance of images depicting empty stations and solo passengers seemed to stand out on the contact sheets, reminding me that I myself was in transition during my stay in Philadelphia.
The project was a good experiment for me, allowing me to free myself of formalities and take a more street photography approach to my images. It also reaffirmed my interests in narrative photography with strong conceptual foundations. In a way, spontaneity inspired me to think of future projects rooted in pre-production and technical precision--these images reflect a creative transition, and ultimately brought inspiration for stronger pieces.
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