The Noir Diptychs are a series of images concerning the idea of fear. The decisive moment when you sense something is amiss and you have to act quickly to preserve your safety.
Although my Brooklyn neighborhood was upper-middle class and quite safe, my mother taught me as a child to be afraid of the city streets after dark. Once I was a teenager I realized that I enjoyed the heightened senses and the rise in adrenaline that accompanied roaming Manhattan at night with my friends.
I began shooting the Urban Noir portfolios in 1997 and have remained passionate about documenting the urban landscape at night.
I was involved in two car accidents within 4 months of each other in 2007. The physical injury to my neck disallowed my ability to look through the lens of my slr camera for the next 3 years. I looked back to my contact sheets to create a two-image narrative from my existing negatives so I could continue to create new work while my neck fully healed.
I felt well enough to purchase a dslr in 2010 and have been busy to creating new series of multiple image narratives. But this series was created during a dark period of my life when I had a lot of pain and a small amount of energy. It represents that moment when destiny intervened and it was too late to protect myself from harm.
Images from the Noir Diptychs have been exhibited at Farmani Gallery in Brooklyn, NY, ArtView Gallery in Chatham, NY and dnj Gallery, Santa Monica, CA.