I hope I shall be able to make some drawings in which there is something human - Vincent Van Gogh
Pernoctators started as an attempt to overcome my own shyness, and to make contact with other human beings. When I was unable to talk to someone, I would instead lift up my camera and photograph them. In capturing brief moments in these photographs taken in bars, clubs, parties and art galleries, I have made a connection with their subjects. At the time, I called the project "Out Reaching". However, as my connection to the subjects has become closer, I have renamed it "pernoctators", after the term used for a person who stays up all night working, praying or partying.
As well as social necessity, I have been driven by diverse aesthetic considerations. Pernoctators has been an exploration of low-light situations, of chiaroscuro, a collision between the visual styles of the Mannerist and Baroque painters and the concerns of the Paris and New York street photographers. Each photograph should appear as a still from a movie, and each requires the presence of three factors to be succesful: a desire to relate to the subject, a perceived moment of beauty, and the suggestion that a bigger story extends before and after the photograph's captured moment of time.
Status: ongoing. See my party photographer website for many more examples.