This series of photographs were originally meant to simply document the space of the Portofino Apartment, a habitat that encapsulated and oozed the highs and lows of the mental state of the burgeoning artist. They were captured in a necessity to preserve the space. To be frank, after I had finished documenting said space, I put these images aside and did not revisit them until the following summer. It wasn’t until then that I realized how much energy seeped from them. In my mind. It was the perfect summary of a duality of self induced madness with the blissful notes of psychedelia, however the borders of the dichotomy were oft blurred, exchanging notes with one another. It was the creation and the documentation of such, the fact that we all had a collective hand somewhere or another in writing on the walls, that eventually drove me to realize that this was more than a simple documentary series, that it was in essence a collaborative installation space, one filled with mixed media, with my photographic prints hanging on the walls, and brush strokes washed over them. With paintings and drawings covered by lines of poetry or scrawled rambled sayings. It was the installation space of the artist’s mind. One that Larry Clark, Nan Goldin, and Lauren Greenfield had shot before me, not as physical space, but as uncensored documentation of the fellow peer and artist, showing what it was like to live with self, and whether that self be healthy or unhealthy, addicted or sober, safe or unsafe, was not the point, therefore I felt as if it was imperative to highlight and document a site, a site that held emotions that were never verbally spoken but visually so, and in truth:
There isn’t a day or night that I don’t find myself thinking about that apartment in Portofino. With the haze of cigarette smoke filling the room, clinging to loose laundry, as feet scuffle over the floor over chipped paint, leaving footprints in dry shampoo; with chatter, laughter, or sobs filling the rooms. It was a middle ground of home and an escape; a place to retreat to, to a place where anxiety loomed and dread followed. The ideas that flourished here; whether they blossomed or rotted bears no weight in my mind; I cherish each and everyone I was able to witness or bear collaboration or give feedback to.
These are the images of Portofino in its last days that we gave it fruit.
"portofino Nights" exhibited in "tl;dr" midwest nice, online
Full series exhibited at the Peter Mendenhall Gallery, Pasadena, CA, United States
