March 5th - 18:44

Title: March 5th - 18:44 Medium: Super-8 film Aspect Ratio: 4:3 Resolution: 2880 x 2160 File Type: H.264 Codec / MP4. Comments: From Wisdom Tree to Vancouver to meet Maria's identical twin sister, Xenia. I flew and was racing against the sun set trying to flow through customs until I was tapped on the shoulder by a border agent and asked to follow him behind the security checkpoint. I was confused and anxious as I was going to be late for the photoshoot in the park to match her twin sister at sunset. The officer held me there for an hour. Checking all of my luggage and opening all of my film canisters. He thought I was smuggled drugs, into a city that is known for its legalized flexibilities on drug use. I was outraged and confused on why he had profiled me. Was it my beard? Was it my tattoos? He looked just like me with beard and tattoos. Maybe he was me in another life on the side of the law. He did not say why he held me, but it was obviously mistaken identity for a drug bust of some sort. I was so angry because this unnecessary search made me late for the very reason I traveled here was to make a portrait. It is safe to say that he found nothing incriminating because I do not travel with drugs or do drugs anywhere. Cleaner than bleached laundry. What gets me high these days is making art, which this man made me late for. I played it cool and hurried along to my car and to Xenia's home as she and her son were waiting for me. The light had gone to dark and she invited me upstairs to the playpen of her home. She served me tea and we sat for a while talking and thinking how to shoot. So her son picked up lights and started dressing his mom with it playfully and this was a precious moment to record, and so I did. A mother and her son. You can see the love in her eyes and the joy in his face. We had wrapped up the shoot and she walked me downstairs, in the elevator I had some film left and saw the reflections and thought to myself, this would be a great homage to her sister as a symbolic gesture of the mirrored duality. And so I shot until we made it to the first floor in this tight elevator. We stopped on two floors on the way down people entering and exiting, carefully sidestepping me as I recorded. We made it to the lobby and my film had finished and I felt we had made something special. The bond of a mother and her son. The connection between twins from across two countries. One twin standing on top of a mountain in her sovereignty, the other holding down the fortress for her new family. The inside and outside of the world be two people who look exactly the same, though their lives are completely different. Nature has a divine plan from the beginning, and the way we are nurtured conditions us how to live tomorrow.