LIVING(ROOMS)

For much of my life, I had no blueprint for love, stability, or family. Raised without real parents or family and left to navigate life on my own, I learned most of what I thought I knew about "home" from sitcoms and distant observations. It wasn't until my early twenties—when I became a full-time single father, that I felt the urgency to create something different for my daughter. After I received a challenge from a therapist’s to "photograph happiness" I was forced to confront the patterns in my own life that had become prevalent in much of my early work: images filled with anger, loss, and uncertainty. This realization became the catalyst for Living(Rooms), a body of work that highlights people in their most unguarded moments—lounging, laughing, grieving, existing. These photographs reflect not only my own journey toward understanding love and belonging but also a larger exploration of the intimate spaces where we all experience our truest selves and the way a home holds laughter, solitude, connection, and routine. Through these images, I invite viewers to examine what home means to them, and how we define the relationships and rituals that make us feel safe.