josey // seattle, wa

“I’m good at looking forlorn, angry, confused, and amazing… all at once if you need me to.”

That was the start of my shoot with my favorite boyrista & local band frontman, Josey. He’s the type of person who makes my day, every day.

And he makes a mean americano. Thank you, Josey.

This session was originally posted at CALIMA Portraits a few years back, but I will admit that I’ve come back to it over & over again… Josey has since moved to New York & then I think to Philly? We’ve kept up on social media, but it’s not quite the same around here in Ballard since he left… I still get my americano, but rarely with a side of adorable wit & a dash of sex appeal like what one should expect with Josey. Anyway, I want to post what I’d never said before but feel comfortable with now that it’s been so long, but Josey had gone through a really intense breakup just a couple of weeks before these photos were taken… and although we had already talked about making photos together, I saw in him a sadness & a vulnerability that I knew I had to photograph immediately. I’m no war photographer & I’m barely a documentary photographer; I am a portrait photographer, who even under my own admission, tends to lean towards photos of beauty & happiness. But knowing someone like Josey–who goes out of his way to make others smile– and knowing that this rare form he had taken as a result of his breakup was most likely going to be very fleeting, I knew that sadness & vulnerability were what I wanted to document with him. I went with my heart on this one, and my heart was fully influenced by his heart at the time as evident by the resulting moodiness & harshness that my photographs rarely lean towards… and I fall in love with these photos every time I see them.

So I guess it just goes to show that there is beauty in everything. And even if our moments of sadness, heartache & anger are temporary, there is a serene beauty in the moment that we find ourselves alone, and there is hope in being able to one day look back & know that the darkness eventually & inevitably leads us to the light.

Thanks for the lesson, Josey. Today I’ll have an americano in your honor… xo.