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2016 was a year of working with great clients, and reconnecting with myself and the people I love, through chaos and with my camera. I took on assignments I felt like were made just for me. I felt more creative than ever, and photographed my own life with the same intensity with which I’ve photographed so many people who have trusted me in their most vulnerable moments through the years.

I’ve joked that 2016 is more of a verb: | [to͞o ˈTHouz(ə)nd sikˈstēn] To end abruptly, take too soon, maim, kill, destroy, set aflame, ruin, abandon, in an untimely, incomprehensible, insane, reckless, nonsensical, unreasonable, unjustifiable, shocking way; to repeatedly inflict tragedy upon someone or something, inducing compounding sorrows; having died in 2016: “Molly’s house got 2016ed by a tree during Hurricane Matthew.” ”My grandfather’s brain is getting 2016ed. Alzheimer’s.” “Look, that dumpster is on fire. Who 2016ed that dumpster? Wait that’s no dumpster – that *is* 2016.” “David Bowie, Prince, Muhammad Ali, Leonard Cohen, George Michael, and that lady who fell 30,000 feet during a plane crash and lived, all died this year – 2016ed.” From the last incomprehensible white-knuckle weeks of my marriage, to my cousin Tommy’s overdose death, to the rise of Donald Trump, and all the celebrities who passed, if 2016 proves anything, it’s that the tropes of “everything happens for a reason or “the phoenix rises from the ashes” are crap. The universe is fickle and indifferent – it births stars from ash, but doesn’t care if they shine on you.

My life and my career tell me that most suffering is meaningless. But it’s the best teacher. It teaches you what you are really made of. Priorities come into stark relief; molehills don’t feel like mountains anymore. You learn to create your own catharsis and closure. Suffering is a glue stronger than gravity that bonds people. Everywhere I looked, I saw people being resilient, despite personal and cosmic suffering. They picked themselves, pushed on, they created, and commiserated and celebrated despite it. 

What a struggle it’s been.  If I had to struggle in 2016, I’m glad I struggled along with you. Forward together – relentlessly.

Much love, and thanks for everything.

Orange County Republican Party headquarters in Hillsborough, N.C. firebombed for The New York Times.  Lot’s of outtakes from this assignment yesterday.  1). Campaign volunteers continued phone operations outside their headquarters. 2). The hole where the molotov cocktail allegedly entered the building. 3). The interior damage from smoke and flame. Authorities believe the fire extinguished itself after running out of oxygen. 4). Evelyn Poole-Kober, the vice chairwoman of the Orange County Republican Party, poses for a portrait by the window. 5). Smoke-damaged George W. Bush bobble-head. 6). Smoke-damaged books by conservative personalities. 7). The swastika and graffiti that read “Nazi Republicans leave town or else” had been covered up by police. 8.) A melted, soot-covered eagle on a singed American flag. 9). Volunteer Blake Halsey mans the phones outside. 10). Ken Grantham of Carolina Game and Fish, and his customers found it hard to believe that anybody from Hillsborough could be involved in the firebombing.

Michigan sunsets: Presque Isle and Flint. 

Summer storm, July 2016.