I began this project when I got my very first 35mm camera… When it started it was an attempt to understand what my “start where you are” orientation is. I didn’t know or understand how but the idea that Gibson-Graham posits has been deeply interesting to me since I first heard it from a debate coach named Nooch many years ago. Since starting though, this project has completely changed. At first, I just tried to capture my friends and found family. But the thematic coherence of this was wanting. I liked taking pictures of my friends but the collection had no greater story and became just a random collection of photos whose only unifying feature was “I know that person”.

However, right before Dia de Muertos 2024, my Abuela passed and I traveled to Sinaloa for her funeral. At the funeral, I saw not only my immediate family, but my extended family, and many friends/community members that my Abuela had a profound impact on whom I had never met much less heard of. When I returned home I began to think about how widespread our influence on people truly is. The shops we frequent, and the homeless people we pass on the street in the same spot every day. Friends, family, strangers… So I began to write out everyone I interacted with some frequency… the people who would notice if I vanished even if I didn’t consider them friends or even know their names. As I did, this list grew larger than I could have ever guessed.

So I revisited this project after I made it back home and I changed its direction. I am now trying to capture everyone I affect with any regularity—friends, family, coworkers, tea shop employees, etc. I want to capture my circle of influence and document them in the environments in which I interact with them—their “natural habitat” for lack of a better phrase. I will likely never be able to capture everyone like this. Many have moved away, some I only speak with through text, and some I have yet to realize fall into this project. However, the attempt to catalog my community in this way is a goal that has forced me to engage more thoughtfully with the world around me and become more mindful of the effect I have on my communities.

I hope these photos give a decent impression of how I experience the world around me and the love that I have for it even when I struggle to find the energy to express it.