I first started taking photos for this book after a project I did called Springtime 2026 had been published. My intention was to spend the Summer photographing New York City and my hometown of Scranton Pennsylvania to make this a sort of “part two” to Springtime. However, shortly into starting to take pictures for this project my Uncle Micheal’s health started to decline rapidly.

Everyone in my family called him Uncle Buddy though and he’d been living in Thailand for as long as I can remember, decades honestly, so the only way I ever had really communicated with him was through calling on holidays and texting him. Throughout the Summer while I was taking pictures for the book I would send them to him after I got them developed. I thought that it would be fun to show him because he had lived in New York City in the 80s while teaching English at Columbia University and that he would enjoy seeing the city and how it looks now as well as seeing Scranton because he was born and raised there like I was.

He passed away in mid-August 2026. After he died I suddenly had no creative spark left. I couldn’t continue the project.

was insanely frustrated. I have never been in a creative slump in my life and I couldn’t figure out why I couldn’t pick up my camera. I was sitting in a cafè called Abraço in the Lower East Side in Manhattan having an espresso con panna and the thought came into my mind that I would take some pictures here and show him the place and my drink. “Wait, I can’t show show him. Buddy is gone. I can’t send him anything anymore.” So I put my camera away.

I came to the realization that I hadn’t been taking the photos for the book. I had been taking the photos for him. All the pictures I took that I thought were for my book were things I thought were beautiful or were funny or interesting that wanted to show him. And once he died there was nothing left to show.