Yesterday was, well…. it was another day here. I wasn’t sure what to do with myself. Maybe still a little jet lagged, I’ve been waking up in the middle of the night for a few hours and just staring up at the ceiling in my tiny little flat in what feels like another universe. Of course all the things that I was supposed to finish up work wise, before I left come screaming at me like a train, and then I think about Jesse, or my brother Rob….

But that’s aside the point. The point, is that I slept until noon on Sunday, and then wandered over to get a much needed coffee at a little cafe across from Gare Montparnasse. I was sitting in the shade, and could seriously smell urine and very dirty people around me (they don’t call in Urine town for nothing) Needless to say,I was feeling pretty depressed. I journaled for a bit, and then decided that I needed to get out of the shade, away from the transients, and into the sun. I planned to walk to the Luxembourg Gardens and do some shooting. Along with not getting much sleep, I am also still very disoriented here (but getting better each day). I thought I knew exactly how to get to the gardens because I get quite cocky when it comes to traveling, but I got lost…. (of course) and ended up at Cimetière de Montparnasse. (No, it is not where Jim Morrison is buried).

Here’s the redemtive beauty of my day….. Once I lost myself in the moment and started to really look at the graves and the grave tombs at Cimetière de Monparnasse, and completely forgot about the burden to make photographs and the smell of urine, my alpha state kicked in and suddenly I was seeing things in a new light. I started to notice all the old door knobs on the grave tombs, and without thinking twice, got lost in a world of creating images based on the detail of this old place. It was invigorating and also exciting. Who would have thought? Me making work at a cemetery? (I’m not really into the whole goth, cemetery photography thing).

I also had this really cheesy thought about the whole process of making art—and bear with me, I’ve been alone for a week… I started to think that creating art is like kissing. You obviously have to be passionate about it from the get go, but sometimes it takes a little letting go to really get into the groove of it and let nature take over. Especially when it’s a first kiss or kissing a new lover—It can be awkward at first, but with enough passion, the kissing becomes less about kissing, and more about getting lost in the kiss…. This is how the day felt to me. It was as if I was kissing a new lover—photographing a new subject—Once I let go, the moment was totally unexpected and divine….






So this image isn’t even about being a good photograph. It’s just so romantic! If I die before Jesse, I hope that he engraves my tombstone with an image like this….. ahhhh, L’amour! Maybe it was seeing this tombstone that made me think about kissing!


….and then I discovered the grave-tomb door knobs and their intricacy.