Photography

“No flash, no telephoto zoom lens, no gas mask, no auto-focus, no press pass” - Allan Sekula (2000).

During my sociological training, I also became an autodidact photographer. Photography is indispensible to my written notes and observations towards the actualization of my intense curiosity about societies. To use sociologist C. Wright Mills oft-cited phrase, photography trains my sociological imagination.

I have been fortunate to learn from several visual scholars, including visual studies pioneer Frank Cancian. I pursue my interest in the visual through writing about and making images as a means of engagement with the world, leading to deeper, sustained analyses, theoretical developments, and action.

In December 2021, I published “Beach Boulevard” with the independent contemporary art publisher Immaterial Books. This project was the result of my visual investigations into the legacy of industrialization and development in coastal California. In Beach Boulevard, I confront quotidian landscapes, but also the “unintentional landscapes” of “the city” and its inhabitants as I use photography to describe and problematize dominant economic, political, and cultural narratives.

You will find a number of image galleries corresponding to my completed and ongoing photographically driven work in the corresponding links below. Also, since 2022, I have been a Contributing editor at The Photobook Journal, an e-journal of photography criticism.