Saved as: the young photographer from the fair

Isn't it funny how the thing you love most can also be the loneliest?

Photography does that to you. You show up, you connect, you see something real through the lens and then you go home alone. You select images, edit them, second-guess every decision. You send a gallery and wait in silence, wondering if they loved it, if you got it right, if that one image you almost kept should have stayed. All of it happens internally. Just you and a screen.

Two weeks ago I did something that made me nervous. I set up a little stand at a street faire in Park Slope. Some of my work on display, me behind it, hoping the right people would stop.

I almost didn't do it but my friends insisted.

My plan was simple: wait for the people my work naturally resonated with. What I didn't expect was how much I would love just talking to people of all ages, other photographers, curious strangers. A high school student stopped and told me my work really resonated with her.

But the person I keep thinking about most is a woman I met near the end of the day.

We exchanged numbers and this week we had lunch.

She's probably around 75. She photographs, she archives, and she told me she's slowly cleaning out her home so her family doesn't have too much to deal with one day. She said it so matter-of-factly, like it was the most natural thing in the world to be thinking about.

She saved me in her phone as "the young photographer from the fair." Young? I smiled internally. I guess it’s all a matter of perspective.

We talked about photography, about life, about why we pick up a camera in the first place. Her answer and mine aren't so different, we both photograph because we understand, somewhere deep down, that nothing stays.

She just understands it more clearly than I do.

I photograph people because I believe in the power of real, unguarded moments. I just forgot for a while that I needed them too. You can’t always hide behind the camera. That afternoon reminded me what this work is actually about. It’s not the editing, not the delivery, not the waiting for feedback in silence. It's about seeing, and connecting. It’s about perspective and learning how other people see the world.

Sometimes you set up a little stand at a street faire not knowing who will stop. And sometimes the person who stops changes how you see things for a while.