Tone Poem, 2025
Series of 13 giclée prints on archival paper. Each 30 x 20 inches. Editions of 5.This project explores emotional and architectural tensions embedded in Los Angeles, where light and shadow, beauty and isolation, coalesce within the city’s fabric. Through fragmented urban details—light sources, building textures, and shadows—the images strive to capture both intimacy and estrangement, tracing the shifting relationship between place and self. The golden hour’s fleeting warmth gives way to the stark reality of concrete, glass, and steel, revealing a city that both seduces and alienates. To deepen this interplay, lines of poetry—presented in fragmented parts—are overlaid onto the images themselves, echoing the ubiquitous presence of typography across Los Angeles’ visual landscape. Billboards, neon, faded hand-painted signs—text is inescapable here, layering meaning over the built environment just as the poem layers itself onto these photographs. In these quiet corners and overlooked textures, the work captures Los Angeles not as a fixed identity, but as a reflection of desire, memory, and discontent.
Los Angeles bleeds gold,
a bruise stretched across the horizon,
soft as a promise you know is a lie.
The city hums—low, electric,
a tone poem you didn’t ask for but can’t unhear.
Look—
from Mulholland, the streets drip amber,
arteries glittering, veins of light feeding
nothing but longing.
Palm trees shiver like metronomes in the wind,
counting time you don’t have.
This light—
this holy, honeyed light—
sings in a language of shadows.
It lies to you, soft and warm,
says: “Stay a little longer. Everything is fine.
Everything is beautiful in this glow.”
But the shadows stretch,
long fingers reaching,
pulling you under the city’s breath.
A cracked windshield catches the sun,
shatters it into a thousand truths.
Do you see it?
Do you see yourself in the splinters?
Because this is where the music changes.
The light bends, folds, twists—
and you’re in it now.
Every corner whispers.
Every silhouette leans in close.
Do you feel the weight of what’s not said?
Of what’s been left here in the space between?
The shadows don’t just stretch—they ache.
The city doesn’t just hum—it moans.
Golden hour isn’t tender.
It’s sharp, it’s slick,
it’s the edge of a blade.
Not just a place, but a mirror.
And you, standing there,
bathed in light and thinking it’ll last.
You dreamer.
You beautiful, broken thing.
A poem you’re already part of.
Prints available by request.