Title: August 21st - 18:03
Medium: Super-8 film
Aspect Ratio: 4:3
Resolution: 2880 x 2160
File Type: H.264 Codec / MP4.
Comments: The funny thing about this video is that it was part of the original trial run back in January on my first failed attempt at Moments of the Unknown. That feeling of pride and failure is a tough one to cope with, but it is the greatest teacher if you can accept fate and let it go. The moving portrait was shot in his family's photography gallery during an LA themed exhibition, which I believe is the most important photography space in Los Angeles. When I first moved to LA back in 2019 I had set up a meeting with Nicholas to try and hustle and bustle my way into the LA art scene coming from the NYC scene. The pace moved differently there, Nick would always tell me the way things worked here is "Slow burn" than burning out like a moth to a flame. Speaking of slow burn we ended up becoming great friends and burned a couple joints in the back lot after he gave me a book he published called, This is not a pipe. A high quality photography art book about glass and history of blowing it, the top dogs in the scene too. We became friends ever since, with a shared passion in photographs and psychedelics. Then disaster struck the Earth... Covid hit us like the plague, literally. But in this dark time on Earth, there was renewal and growth. Peace and presence. Things felt like they stopped accelerating, hurtling us into the future at an unsustainable rate. Wish I could say the same for how things are going on now with technology and ai in the year 2025, but lets remain optimistic shall we? Time moved slower, we were all home and enjoying life without needing to goto work. Going inward instead. Spending quality time with our loved ones, because no one knew what this virus could do so it forced us to focus on the gift of life and those around us that are still living and breathing. Sometime during Covid in the summer time of 2020 I went to visit my friend Nicholas at his sanctuary in Pasadena to photograph him and his family for Smoke and Mirrors as the Ten of Coins! I had the passion to create and things started to ease up as we learned how to navigate social distancing. How to continue living and creating was the question in this new uncertain age? Years later, once everything seemed to cool down with Covid, or maybe everyone just stopped caring and wanted to live their lives again almost a year and half in to quarantine, after the summer of 2021 people started to return to their old ways of congregation and connection. We sought it out as zooming and calls did not feel enough anymore. Like a newborn baby to a mothers touch, I think we all need that human connection to give us the will to live instead of being isolated to death. Nicholas joined me in the NFT photography space as I helped on board him into this digital realm. We learned a lot from one another and was grateful we can share our worlds of physical and digital photography as a team. So, going back to the beginning of this story. During my trials and tribulations of this Super-8 series I wanted to keep this specific video of Nicholas to honor our friendship, our past, our origins. That being said, I still met up with him on this day in 2023 and created a Polaroid of him in his backyard in Pasadena. This was the only video I decided to keep in my second try at the year long odyssey. Why? I like this idea of weaving time, questioning it and connecting it to the now. Honoring the original version by implementing it into the second. It was a way to make use of something we already created and can communicate this idea of the "First try" with the next. Does it really matter if I use this video, or create a new one in his backyard? I don't think so. If anything it adds to the lore, the dimensions, what failure means and how to transform that into success... Using what you have as artistic materials so nothing goes to waste, not even a precious moment with a dear friend. I still made a Polaroid of him and was present with him again! For me thats all that matters, and its my art. I make the rules and honoring past mistakes to metamorphic it into a working medium is healing and learning from our mistakes and to stand by them. Connecting the past with the present, two versions of the same thing. It was a choice, a "decisive moment" so to speak. Challenging my own rules on what "counts." For me, showing and being present as I said earlier is what makes it real. The video is just the proof, wether it was made months before or months later. This piece stretches time and unifies it by threading the needle through film and how it is edited. If we don't honor and accept our mistakes, how can we ever learn to blossom and grow?
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