BMF

The doctors warned the parents that the baby might die. It was born blue and unmoving despite the presence of whatever ultramodern (for the time) medical equipment was present in that hospital in Portland, Oregon on November 27th 1990. Some babies just die. But this one didn’t! Grandparents, parents, everyone in the delivery room was much relieved to hear it crying (breathing) from the adjacent room where the doctors had taken it, though now they’re wondering if the mewling will ever stop. Or maybe they enjoy it (maybe you might it enjoy it); hard to dissolve the subjectivity of my perspective—I’m that baby that nearly died the day it was born. See, you’re supposed to write these artist bios in third person. But, seriously, isn’t that 1) conceded and 2) not fooling anybody? Maybe it’s supposed to create an aura of grandeur, like maybe somebody else spent their time writing this about me. Silly. What else… In highschool this now pubescent once-nearly-dead baby grew a mohawk and dyed it pink and got really into punk rock. Relevant? He worked on a boat in Alaska. He’s been tinkering with film photography since the time of the pink mohawk (I don’t have that now, my hair is its natural color—auburn) and has had some or no success depending on how successful you’ve been with/what you know about abstract film photography. He’s been writing since elementary school. He got back into punk rock when living in Puerto Rico; there’s lots of good punk in Puerto Rico. He has a theory that you can gauge the political awareness of a town by the vibrancy of their punk rock music scene—not to say that everyone who is socially/politically aware enjoys punk, of course not, it’s more like a punk rock scene is analogous to what biologists call ​indicator species​. And now he’s saddened to report that there is no punk rock left in Portland, Oregon. He’s also kinda been a biologist in a professional capacity at several points, also an archeologist/anthropologist, but that shit feels like it should be on another website, yeah? Gongfu tea ceremony, too. He wants you to be happy and feel loved. But he wants you to be acutely aware of whatever privileges you are experiencing, as in that you ought to be aware of the injustice of your own privilege. He wants to know how he can help. He wants to keep writing. He needs to borrow a dollar (actually), but he’d rather you give it to somebody more desperate (again, actually). He’s not dead yet. He encourages you to march bravely onward.

Read my interview on Lomography