When I went home this past month for my final winter break as a senior, undergraduate student, I stepped back into a world I had thought had gone with the wind (and four years of college), living as a senior in high school. My brother, Apollo and his friends share something any nostalgic soul would sweetly and sadly smile at, but this "something", what exactly do I mean? Of course this "something" includes the years growing up playing soccer together, and the first punch thrown on the playground of elementary school, or the carpooling to skate parks in the rebellious days of Eminem and that first joint, but the fact that these memories are jointly shared by a group of boys focused on purely living is what that "something" means to me and I think them. This shared memory balances on my heartstrings, making sure I can feel the light pressure of my own memories soaked in that idea of "purely living". I understand those days as a wormhole of immortality, perpetuated by the physiological madness of youth, and at first I believed that dimension to be vacuum sealed to my brother and his friends, but I was wrong. That "something" I am talking about, that alternate reality that seems like a lucid dream, exists not only to those living within it but also to those who create it, and I know I am the creator of my childhood and my living youth. This is the reason why the heavy bows of youth fondly weigh us down as we get older, because once you have created something, it will always live within you just as vibrantly as you once lived within that lucid dream.
It is because of my brother and his friends that I was able to come to this conclusion, and for that reason I thought it appropriate to create a project dedicated to their time as seniors in high school. The project is titled: "Some Days of Senior Daze (S.S.)", and documents my brother and his friends on some of those days back in high where you wished someone with a camera was around to capture the memory. I will be posting this project in sections; the first section will be individual, directed portraits (shot with 120mm) of the boys accompanied with a short biography, a song of their choice and their answer to the question, "Where are you right now?". The second section will be free form, capturing the boys as a friend, rather than a photographer (shot with 35mm).
I hope whomever takes the time to immerse themselves within the photographs and accompanying mediums, is able to see something I saw or something completely different, but I just hope for someone to see that "something".
