This project exists because I needed to unlearn some of my most ingrained habits as a working photographer, and to escape the pitfalls of overthinking one’s work. Instead, it has caused me to question my own free will.
To bypass my creative neurosis, I wanted to photograph as intuitively as possible; I approached this series like I would a sketchbook, recycling the pages and doodling in the margins. I began experimenting with compositional echoes; making in-camera double– sometimes triple– exposures in a panoramic 35mm (whose dimensions I was unpracticed in framing). My first attempts overlapped the Swiss Alps and Miami Beach, followed by Quebec’s low arctic and Costa Rica, then the Toronto Aquarium with the Gaspé Peninsula.
When I saw the results, I was confounded by the alignment of random frames taken weeks and an ocean apart— and all the more so with a rangefinder and little to no memory of what each one already contained. I was delighted and unsettled. Am I that predictable? The serendipity of the outcome opened a window into compositional grooves I didn’t realize I'd been caught in, and seemed to dilute the creative agency/objectivity most photojournalists hold dear. Rather than provide answers, this project has introduced new questions about predictability and free will in my practice. What, for example, does it mean to photograph a trail of skiers in Switzerland, and place them unwittingly in a neat row at the bottom of Versace’s pool?