Tarryall Productions

By d’Jurnet

August 26^th, 2025

I confess: I am an amateur photographer without formal training. My education is piecemeal—through books, exhibitions, documentaries, and tutorials. I am not technically proficient, nor obsessed with equipment. What drives me instead is curiosity and the desire to capture moments that hold meaning. My work is not about being a generalist or dabbling with this or that image; it is about striving to be original, thoughtful, and respectful. I write this essay to make clear that my photographs are never intended to be contrived, exploitative, or appropriative. They are a record of my attempt to understand both others and myself through images.

My journey with photography began in the mid-1960s when I received my first camera as a child. I photographed anything within reach—family members, friends, the patio behind our house, a tree in front. The excitement deepened during family vacations out West, where I first encountered the sweeping landscapes of the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific Coast. The mythic promise of “going West”- a Manifest Destiny 2.0 - was alive during that era, fueled by new interstates and the idea that travel was a birthright of the American Dream. I marveled at Mount Rushmore, Yellowstone National Park, and the Pacific Ocean. Yet, under the glare of the Great Plains desert sun, I couldn’t help but wonder how pioneers endured the harshness of the Oregon Trail; the Donner Party tragedy was not a tall tale. Even then, I felt the tension between the dream and the reality.

The 1960s projected a double image. On the one hand, they were “The Wonder Years”: suburbs, small rural towns, summer baseball, swimming pools, rodeos, dude ranches, roadside motels with vibrating beds with Magic Fingers. On the other hand, the nightly news broadcasted assassinations, the Vietnam War, and the Civil Rights struggle. Television and newspapers exposed the nation’s fault lines, undermining the glossy vision of America as a land of unshakable opportunity. To me, this revealed a kind of cognitive dissonance. The communities that were familiar - suburbs, small towns, farms —stood in stark contrast to the unrest I saw unfolding on TV. I began to question how people managed to endure injustice, upheaval, and violence while still holding on to identity, dignity, and hope.

The cognitive dissonance I experienced growing up during this period was no less than a personal counterrevolution toward the status quo, which led me to disparate lifestyles: Enroll at a university, devote time, and not take time studying the classroom syllabus, take exams, drop out, hitchhike, sleep on road sides in the heat & humidity, repel drenching downpours, and weather the freezing nights during the winter, pick up a few jobs here and there, wander off on a motorcycle without a plan, then retreat to reading a few select books until it was back to school to put it all back together with an idea to earn a diploma and settle into a career. The experiences through traveling and working in various capacities set my mind with making a positive impact with the underserved. I created my own curriculum which focused on International Development and Social Change. Despite 2 ½ years committing to an academic program, I dropped out. Once again. This was more to do with internal politics; playing the game was not for me. Earning a university diploma was fleeting - down another road, with another set of new circumstances forcing me to settle down and try my luck as a respectful member of “Society”.

Decades later, my camera became a trusted companion and gave me a way to observe how people live in spite of structural inequities and personal hardships. Through a lens, I study eyes, faces, gestures, dress, and environment. I think through images and ask: how do people survive, to hold out, to persist? Sometimes my work focuses on inanimate objects—remnants and surroundings that silently testify to the human presence. These images become more than records; they are questions about meaning, identity, and resilience.

I work with imperfection. Street photography, in particular, offers no guarantees. Lighting shifts, angles disappear, and people move in unpredictable ways. My photographs emerge from the environment I encounter, not from carefully staged conditions. I avoid presets in post-production, preferring adjustments that clarify or intensify what was already present. Sometimes this means a sharp, balanced composition; other times, it’s the grain, blur, or monochromatic tones that bring forward raw emotion. Often, I don’t know what I’ve truly captured until I review the images. That uncertainty, that openness, is part of the process.

What matters most is the intent behind the work. I do not photograph to mimic, exploit, or appropriate. Each image, to me, represents a specific moment in time—an ephemeral intersection of person and place, shaped by broader social and political forces. To photograph someone or something is to acknowledge their existence within history’s flow, not to claim ownership over it. I recognize that photography always raises the question of appropriation, but I approach it with respect. My aim is to humanize, not to consume.

Philosophers and artists have shaped my understanding of photography’s role. Thomas Struth asked whether “unselfconscious structures characterize a culture.” Ariella Azoulay insists that photographs exist in a “civil contract” between subject and viewer, rooted in politics rather than pure aesthetics. Nietzsche viewed art as a way to transform the absurdity of existence into something bearable. Eric Karpeles countered by describing art as an expansion of perception, a way to access multiple worlds beyond our own. I am drawn to these debates because they remind me that every image is more than a picture; it is an encounter with history, culture, and philosophy.

Margaret Bourke-White, documenting the dispossessed of the Great Depression, once wrote that “to understand another human being, you must gain some insight into the conditions which made him what he is.” This is the principle I hold close. My photographs are attempts to understand conditions—social, economic, political, environmental—that shape lives. They are also attempts to foster empathy, to remind us that we all share responsibility within a vast human community.

Ultimately, I photograph to understand. I use images to think through the human condition: to explore fragility, resilience, and dignity. My work is celebratory and critical, wistful and documentary. It is not about technical perfection, but about listening, observing, and seeking meaning. Each photo is a fragment of a larger story, an invitation to care, and a reminder that we are bound together in ways we often overlook. This, I believe, is the true promise of photography—not just to capture the visible, but to reveal the invisible ties that connect us.