cat eyes and a cortado
Coffee in MidCity, LA
Last fall I was introduced to a girl on the streets of Soho, New York. She was cool and by that I mean, she seemed like a creative with her ideas on bright and her energy was ‘good vibes only.’ Somehow in the conversation that ensued between she and who the man I was with, it included her being told about an Instagram profile called The Coffeetographer.
He didn’t tell her that The Coffeetographer was me. And she remarked, “isn’t that some white hipster account?” If you know me, you know I have nothing against ‘white or hipster’ giving my family background and the power of a word to subjectively contextualize a conversation.
However, what I did realize was that somehow in the trajectory of documenting a culture these last five years, specifically the last two, I stopped turning the lens on myself. I’ve always felt that it was more important to document the culture – the people out there, the connections in media out there, the Arts out there, the aha! moments in here than necessarily show myself.
It’s said that the thing that stings the most is an arrow to where your work is. That sting of what I created being attributed to a visual idea other than me touched a chord within, reaching a place where I knew I must go and eventually would, if only for a matter of time.
While I didn’t like that comment, it pointed me into a direction of where more of my work was. Getting back in front of the lens not for superfluous sake, but because I’ve established my work here and more importantly, I do want people to know that it is me with this voice, it is me using coffee as a lens to look at what I’ve always been drawn to: culture.
So, here I am having a coffee, a cortado in mid city at Healing Coffee Roasters. Now, I am an optimist at heart and I often and only speak here of the things I love. So what Healing Coffee Roasters did right this afternoon was tell me the makeup of my espresso, offer to make me another one when it was apparent that I didn’t quite like it, and treated me with kindness when all I could do was say ‘dark’ for what I was experiencing. I hardly ever say dark I tend to say a feeling and a taste. Today I had neither. I realize in this subjective works of palettes that one can’t like everything. It’s impossible, and today that impossibility happened to me.
xoCo, cde
Dress: Asos
Sunnies: Zero UV
Socks: Urban Outfitters
Shoes: Jeffrey Campbell