Six Girls Six Cities

Six Girls Six Cities began as a concept I simply couldn’t get out of my head, something I couldn’t sleep on. Last year I took the gamble: sixty rolls of film, a one-way ticket around the world, and a blind shot at making something great.

I was looking to create a series of photographs that juxtaposed a girl to a city: a human to a place. My plan, one of my most ambitious yet, was to photograph a girl in studio, on film, and then re-expose the same roll while exploring each city on foot. Six girls and six cities, Tokyo, Moscow, London, Sao Paulo, Paris, New York, and no knowing what would happen. Nothing would be premeditated—every combination had to be by chance.

Even then, I got more than I expected. By composing my subjects in double exposures on a single roll of film, I had found an organic way to capture the complex unity of individual and environment, exploring the nuanced tensions circulating between psyche, context, texture, and population. I was discovering new and enticing cultures, but also finding new elements of an urban life in which I had been living for years.

This series is a landmark for me. As an artist, I feel that I have become more deeply connected with my medium. Six Girls Six Cities embodies a unique combination of process and content that opens doors for exciting new forms of expression. As an individual, I have been brought into contact with my environment by a radical sense of unity; a connection that, in a way, only these pictures can really describe.

2014