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The Seattle Suspects series was born of a need to document the fabulous freaks that had become my friends, and a human backdrop to my life, during the four-year period I lived in the downtown neighborhood of Pioneer Square.
In the mid 90's the concepts of globalization and the Internet were in the first stages of integration into Western society. On the cusp of this new age, and in the last throes of the 20th Century, Seattle was at the helm of pop culture, music and style. This city had been known for pioneers since its inception, and was always aligned with exploration and experimentation in the arts, science and culture.
When I expatriated myself from suburban New Jersey and moved to Seattle in 1992, I found a vibrant subculture of people, who made themselves an art project by creating elaborate persona and unique style. On one side of Seattle were the grunge clubs cranking out tuned-down, socially conscious, inspired music. On the flip side, in the shadows of downtown were the dark clubs that played gothic/industrial dance music and attracted the most elaborate, charmingly androgynous and romantically tragic figures I have ever seen. Across the city I observed these interesting figures, expressing themselves in ways that would get you "beaten up" where I came from, and I embraced this human aesthetic and quickly adopted their ways.
Time was changing the social landscape, and the century was nearing its end. The Jet city was morphing into the Cyber city as Boeing waned and Microsoft reigned. I felt the need to document, in my newly refined style of photography, these unique denizens. I wanted their styles and voices to be recorded without environmental bias, and without color. I sought to strip them down to their cores and allow them to project their true selves unto my film and reveal their souls; be that a romantic Goth finding succor in a dark persona, or a drag queen exploring social taboo as an expressive performance, or simply poets and artists just looking for that elusive something for which their ilk is in perennial quest. Those are the Seattle Suspects that I photographed and this is them, black and white, with nothing to hide and everything to say.
In the mid 90's the concepts of globalization and the Internet were in the first stages of integration into Western society. On the cusp of this new age, and in the last throes of the 20th Century, Seattle was at the helm of pop culture, music and style. This city had been known for pioneers since its inception, and was always aligned with exploration and experimentation in the arts, science and culture.
When I expatriated myself from suburban New Jersey and moved to Seattle in 1992, I found a vibrant subculture of people, who made themselves an art project by creating elaborate persona and unique style. On one side of Seattle were the grunge clubs cranking out tuned-down, socially conscious, inspired music. On the flip side, in the shadows of downtown were the dark clubs that played gothic/industrial dance music and attracted the most elaborate, charmingly androgynous and romantically tragic figures I have ever seen. Across the city I observed these interesting figures, expressing themselves in ways that would get you "beaten up" where I came from, and I embraced this human aesthetic and quickly adopted their ways.
Time was changing the social landscape, and the century was nearing its end. The Jet city was morphing into the Cyber city as Boeing waned and Microsoft reigned. I felt the need to document, in my newly refined style of photography, these unique denizens. I wanted their styles and voices to be recorded without environmental bias, and without color. I sought to strip them down to their cores and allow them to project their true selves unto my film and reveal their souls; be that a romantic Goth finding succor in a dark persona, or a drag queen exploring social taboo as an expressive performance, or simply poets and artists just looking for that elusive something for which their ilk is in perennial quest. Those are the Seattle Suspects that I photographed and this is them, black and white, with nothing to hide and everything to say.