BECOMING GREEN GEMS

I don't remember exactly when Green Gem became an idea.

I remember needing somewhere to put all of the things I wanted to make.

For a long time, my work existed in pieces. Photography was one thing. Events were another. Production, writing, design, hospitality, music, fashion, all these different places I had worked and things I had learned seemed related to me, even when they didn't look particularly related on paper. I felt like I couldn’t connect my story to anything anymore.

I knew I wanted to make things. I was less sure what to call that.

So I began carving out Green Gem.

At first, I spent a lot of time trying to define it.

Was it a photography studio? A creative agency? Production? Creative direction? Editorial? Did I need to pick one? What exactly was I selling? Who was it for?

Eventually I got tired of trying to explain the work I wanted to make before I had made enough of it.

I knew I need to to work within my budget and my resources and that I wanted to build a new body of work.

I turned my bedroom into a hotel room and photographed Do Not Disturb, thinking about why it can feel easier to rest when we leave our own lives for a few days. A story that came from my own struggles with rest and defining productivity.

I photographed old clothes, sewing kits and a pair of worn leather shoes and started thinking about sustainability through care instead of consumption. That became Worn Well. Clothes that I was getting rid of became the focus and changed my own perspective in the process.

I walked around Los Angeles at night with my camera.

I photographed donuts.

The photography led to writing the first pieces and the first official Green Gems titles. The writing changed the way I photographed. Research became creative direction.

I started asking “What is the story here?”

That question changed Green Gem.

People and the things we make. The places we create. The objects we keep. The rituals we build around them. How design influences behavior. How culture becomes visible. Why some things connect with us and others disappear.

Places. Goods. Origins.

It gave Green Gem room to photograph a hotel and think about rest. To talk about sustainable fashion without photographing a sustainable fashion brand. To document a performer before they walk onstage. To photograph a donut because decadence deserves good art direction too.

There were plenty of moments when I wondered whether any of this counted. Most of these first projects weren't commissioned and there wasn't a client standing behind me approving a shot list. Sometimes I had a camera, something I found around my house and an idea I couldn't afford to execute the way I could see it in my head.

Today I finished the portfolio. There was no launch party. No dramatic final scene.

I looked through the pages I had looked through hundreds of times before and, for once, didn't immediately start rebuilding them.

I let it be finished.

For now.

There are things I will change. There are photographs I haven't taken yet. Eventually these projects will sit beside work I can't imagine today, and some of the things that feel important now will probably become footnotes.

I hope so.

Because Green Gem isn't supposed to stay exactly like this.

A year ago, I was trying to find the words for the kind of work I wanted to make.

Today, I can show you.