julie lives here.

Yesterday this photo of Nirmala from her i live here:SF story got picked up by SFist for their Day Around the Bay recap and I’ve been reaping the whirlwind of site views since. I’m so grateful for the exposure and love that this photo was as appealing to others as it is to me.

It’s difficult when you sit with thousands of images in your own little world and it’s impossible to predict what people will relate to. You say you don’t want to figure it out, that you take pictures that are for your own personal enjoyment but still when it comes down to it, you want to know what makes a photo work.

Yesterday I spent most of the morning in a very productive planning meeting with the SOMarts director and curator for the i live here:SF show that will take place at SOMarts this November. I have been finding it difficult to visualize how this show will look and over the past few days, I finally came up with a concept that made sense to me. I have been trying to nail what it was about the project that I mostly wanted to convey: it’s not simply about the static image of a person in San Francisco, nor is it only about their story. Those elements are key, of course, but when I really had to distill what I wanted to show people— it was the process: the meeting, the adjusting, the acclimation and the journey. All in keeping with the context: the city itself.

How do you convey a process when you aren’t performing it at the time? How do you portray a 3D world in a 2D space? I think we came up with some really interesting ideas to present these photography subjects and our time together. I’m excited because I think it’s now all coming together in a much more cohesive way.

As we continue to plan and develop, I’ll write more about the show (but without giving away too many surprises!).