Two Shoots, Six Publications: The Glare of Recognition
Photography is a profession of contradictions. It demands detachment while craving intimacy, objectivity alongside an insistent need to touch the marrow of things. Last month, two of my recent works – distinct yet threaded with a common ambition – were published in six international magazines. These aren’t my first publications. The recognition is gratifying, but it’s the confrontation with the work itself, lingering, unresolved.
The first, Lisa at Loft 203, is part of the ongoing MBM Hotel Chronicles series. A hotel room or Air B&B: its walls thrum with unsaid things, its air thick with someone else’s choices. Lisa stepped into the charged space and owned it, shifting its history with her presence. She moved like light pouring through blinds – subtle, unrelenting, irresistible. Together, we agreed to a vocabulary for sensuality, whispering rather than shouting. The results were featured in Beautica (Nude & Boudoir Issue), UNTOLD Stories (Boudoir Issue), and Moiver (Boudoir Issue) – a trifecta of appreciation feeling affirming and unreal. I believe these are Lisa’s first publications.
(@monalisamichellemybellee)
Then there is Todd Cooney, and his first published images from our work on PTSD – a project not for interpretation, but for confrontation. Todd is a man living with his demons as if they were housemates, their noise constant, their presence a given. The photos refuse comfort; they expose the raw edges of survival. Charisma (Men Issue), UNTOLD Stories (Men Issue), and LeDesir (Men Issue 2) saw something in these images, something urgent enough to share with their audiences.
(@blinddrafterman)
Recognition is a strange thing. It validates your effort but leaves you staring down the gap between intention and result, the void where all unspoken questions live. What did these shoots reveal? About Lisa, about Todd, about myself? About the demanding intimacy of photography, where my lens becomes both mirror and mask?
I don’t have the answers, not yet. Maybe that’s why I keep chasing the next series, the next glimpse of truth hiding just out of reach. For now, I’ll let these two projects speak for themselves, their voices joined in a choir of light and shadow, resilience and grace.
Thank you to both Lisa (@monalisamichellemybellee) and Todd (@blinddrafterman) for their time, effort, patience, and vulnerability. These publications don’t happen without your stories.
Tearsheets from publications show your editorial spread as it appears in print.
