Parts Unknown – On making pictures from the pieces we hide

The series of work I truly poured myself into on purpose was Parts Unknown. I can see myself in older images, why I made them, what I was trying to hold and say, but this was the first time I opened my internal world consciously into photography to process something directly.

Over the last two years I worked through The Dark Side of the Light Chasers and The Artist’s Way. I’d recommend both. Morning pages became an anchor: three pages, no filter, before the phone, before the house wakes up. I get up an hour early to write them. I wrote things I didn’t want to read. I kept going. Debbie Ford’s language for the shadow gave names to what I already knew but hadn’t named.

None of this happened in a vacuum. I’m a father of twins. Seven years in. Parenting is a mirror you can’t put away. When they’re overwhelmed, I’m looking at my own edges. If I want to help them regulate, I have to be honest about what’s still unregulated in me. What I’ve normalised. What I refuse to pass on.

Berlin (2024) – Behind the scenes of Parts Unknown. Giving the cactus a haircut.

The studio became the place to sit with it without talking. I started small. Circles (Void) cut into leaves. A mirror that turns one thing into many fragmented parts. Nature and control facing each other. I wanted to create something symbolic. I wanted the pictures to be metaphors for what I felt inside.

I noticed how often I project—as a parent, as a partner, as a stranger when I first meet people. Thinking I’m seeing someone when I’m meeting an old part of myself. I started noticing how culture, masks of politeness, the stories we tell to keep the room calm, shape us. I noticed how fragmentation is practical—how you become versions to survive.

Berlin (2024) – Experimenting with a tiled mirrors to create images of fragmentation.

I made this series to hold a mirror to myself long enough to not look away. To give my kids a father who can say “I’m sorry,” “I don’t know,” “I’m learning,” without collapsing into shame. To give myself the same.

I showed a few prints to a collector and we ended up talking about parents and repetition, about shattered dreams and the weight of it. He had tears in his eyes.

Parts Unknown isn’t only about what’s missing, though. It remembers. It retrieves. The so-called lost parts are usually just exiled. They’re still coded into us.

Berlin (2024) – Behind the scenes developing the films shot for Parts Unknown at my studio.