Travel Diary

Winter-Spring 2004

My First Journey

a COMING-OF-AGE series

At this point in my life, I had nearly given up on photography. My earliest ambitions had been shaped by dreams of becoming an exceptional portrait photographer like Richard Avedon or Annie Leibovitz. That pull naturally led me to Manhattan, where I pursued an internship in the fashion photography industry. I secured an excellent placement and spent the summer of 2003 learning the realities of professional photography in New York City.

But when the internship ended, I returned home completely disenchanted with that dream. The world I had imagined was not the one I found. For the first time in my life I felt uncertain about my future with photography and unsure what direction my creative life might take.

Alongside photography, my other academic love had always been French. Feeling lost, I applied for a French language and literature study abroad program.

I flew to Paris in January of 2004. Because the program focused on language and literature, my photography became entirely self-directed. During the day I attended classes refining my French grammar and studying French history. We even met at the Louvre for our art history instruction. Outside of class, I wandered the streets of Paris with my cameras in hand.

I was pining, a hopeless romantic, and a lost artist—and Paris met me in the most magical of ways. I arrived unsure of my art and left with a body of work that would anchor me back into it. These images come from that season of my life. It was through this kind of documentary-style personal journaling that I began to find myself again.