I returned from New York City last Saturday. I decided to wait a couple of days before writing an overview of the trip. I wanted everything I experienced, felt and saw to sink in before I attempted to write this piece. The perspective I had hoped those days of reflection would provide hasn't fully arrived. It was a very different visit.

Today, I found myself focusing more on color and patterns, and less on the chaos of the layers of stickers. I am not sure why. I do not remember thinking about that difference at all. It was later when I was walking through the galleries at MoMA, and yes, I went back again — more on that later. As I looked around the galleries, I began to see the same sort of colors and shapes I had been seeing all morning. That revelation was confirmed as I looked through today’s images after getting back to the apartment — sort of interesting.

I was struck by something that has been percolating in the back of my mind for a while — something I have started to call the Decolorization of the Modern World. Next, you're out driving and check out the cars on any street or dealer lot; you will find that nearly all are white, silver, gray, or black. Most homes have exteriors and interiors painted in some variation of white, beige or gray. It turns out this is not just my imagination — researchers have documented it.

There is a different feeling to this year's visit. It struck me today that I have become comfortable with being here. Certainly, the novelty factor has worn off. I know the neighborhood, where to go for coffee, groceries, a piece of New York-style pizza and takeout Chinese. I have the subway system figured out. I know which museums and galleries I want to visit. I can relax as I am today, and not feel like I am missing anything. I know that there are so many things about this city I do not know, places I have not visited, things I have not seen or photographed, but that is okay.

It's April, and I find myself in New York City once again. I have the great privilege of spending a week or so here each April in a friend's apartment. On each of these visits, it has been my habit to keep a daily diary and shape those notes into journal entries for this website. This year, events have conspired against me. I simply do not have the energy, the focus, or frankly the desire to keep up that routine.

Some trips you plan a dozen times before you actually take them. This was one of those.

David Zwirner's exhibition of William Eggleston's final dye-transfer prints — The Last Dyes — has been up since January 15th. I'd been meaning to get down to New York for most of that time. But, as Shakespeare put it, the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune had other plans. Life kept intervening, the way it does. I pushed the trip back once, then again, and then again after that.

Finally, on Sunday, the 1st of March, I committed. Or thought I had. I was going to the exhibition the next day, Monday the 2nd. But no, real life stepped in one more time, and I found myself postponing again. But the show closes March 7th, so I did what I should have done weeks ago: I bought the train tickets. The trip was happening on Tuesday, March 3rd, full stop.

My personal tribute to Martin Parr — the English photographer, Magnum member, sharp observer of modern life, and perhaps most importantly (to me), champion of the photobook. When Parr passed in early December, tributes poured in from across the photographic world. He was clearly beloved, and rightly so.

I was never a devoted follower of his photographs. His work — satirical, colorful, often pointed — was impossible to ignore if you care about photography, but it never quite aligned with my own aesthetic. What I admired most was his deep commitment to the photobook.

Parr wasn’t just a photographer; he was a photobook collector and advocate for the photobook as a vehicle for showing our work. Parr's personal photobook collection ran to over 12,000 volumes which he donated to the Tate galleries in 2017. He also co-authored (with Gerry Badger) The Photobook: A History, a three-volume series covering over 1,000 examples of the form. I own Volume I and still hope to track down the others — though Volume II currently runs around $350 a copy! I will need to save up for that type of purchase.

In September, shortly after our return from Greece, I read a post on The Marginalian (themarginalian.com), a blog I visit frequently. The post was titled “How Humanity Saved the Ginkgo”—an excellent piece that I highly recommend. After reading it, I realized I had never seen a Ginkgo tree, or if I had, I did not recognize it. I became determined to find one.

My first thought was that Roger Williams Park in Providence was the most likely place. The park's website listed a Ginkgo on its map of notable trees. Several days later, I went to the park, determined to find it. Being September, most trees were either in full autumnal colors or bare. I thought the Ginkgo’s distinct leaf shape and bright yellow autumn color would make it easy to spot. Still, I couldn't find it. Had the location been wrong on the map, or had the tree died? I gave up.

I’ve been having a hard time finding the right words after yesterday’s tragic incident on the Brown University campus. Both my partner, Therese, and I are part of the Brown community—Therese as faculty, and me as a staff member at Brown's Warren Alpert School of Medicine — so like so many others at Brown, and across Rhode Island, this came as a terrible shock.

Almost immediately, we started hearing from family and friends checking in to make sure we were okay. Most of them probably knew we live in Warwick, just over eight miles from campus, and assumed we were home on a quiet Saturday afternoon. We weren’t. We were at a matinee of Hamnet at the Avon, just up the street from the building where the shooting occurred.

At the end of my last journal post, I wrote that I was feeling inspired. The funny thing about inspiration, though, is that without motivation and focus, it doesn’t amount to much. Ideas pile up, and nothing actually happens. After sitting with it for a while, I’ve finally found the motivation to follow through.

In that last post, I shared a series of images made with the Provoke iPhone app. I’ve been an admirer of Daidō Moriyama for a long time—his raw, high‑contrast black‑and‑white street photographs have stuck with me for years. Moriyama is often associated with the avant‑garde photography magazine Provoke (starting to see the connection?).

In art and photography, “vision” is your inner “mind’s eye”, a way of seeing that guides the artist in creation. The artist’s challenge is to discover or develop a consistency of vision that shapes what we make and share with the world. When a photographer discovers and can access that “vision”, that is what shapes their practice more than technique or style. It is the personal “vision” that turns photographs from simple “snaps” into something that conveys what we see and who we are. I struggle every day to discover my “vision” and apply it to my work.

Over the past few months, I’ve been thinking a lot about what kind of photographer I am. Looking at my portfolio, my work is all over the place — I drift from one subject or style to another, often chasing whatever catches my fancy or following photographers I admire. I’ve never been good at pinning down a personal style or vision, and that inconsistency has always bothered me.

I’ve been back a few days now, long enough to unpack and start feeling grounded again. Greece was beautiful, complicated, and meaningful — and while the travel itself reminded me why I no longer romanticize airports or long flights, the experience of being there was worth every moment. I wanted to jot down a few reflections while they’re still fresh.

We are in Patras, on the western coast of the Peloponnese, Peninsula. Therese has meeting here at University of Patras and she is celebrating her birthday by spending a week sailing with her sister on the Ionian Sea. They are joining Therese’s friend and her husband on their sailboat. Notice that I am not joining them. While in the Navy I got seasick on an aircraft carrier while it was still moored to the pier. That is, of course, an exaggeration, but not by much. I can handle small boats, but larger boats — nope, not this landlubber!

I told a friend last Saturday that I would finally post on my journal this week. It’s now Friday afternoon, and I still don’t know what to write. I only found the courage to sit down at the keyboard after reading this:

“Every time I start a new post, I never know for sure where it’s going to go. This is what writing and making art is all about: not having something to say, but finding out what you have to say. It’s thinking on the page or the screen or in whatever materials you manipulate. Blogging has taught me to embrace this kind of not-knowing in my other art and my writing.”

The recovery and resumption of anything resembling “real” or “normal” life after our return from the UK and the Coast to Coast walk has been… slow. Difficult. Ongoing, even as I sit here writing. Only in the past few days has my left knee finally started to feel like its old self—no pain, no stiffness, no subtle reminder of all those miles. Getting back into a rhythm, especially with photography, has been more of a struggle than I anticipated.