A Mid-Season Trip for blitz!
Chamonix-Mont-Blanc, France
I made these pictures last year on a stopover in Cham while in Europe for another project. Blake, Shoeburt and Colton were posted up filming for blitz!, and it had been a bit since I’d been on a snowboard trip. I decided to go link for three days of shred. It’s interesting as I have now been snowboarding for just about twenty-five years, and have been photographing it since I was twelve. Although not shooting it all the time, like I once was, I feel so grateful when I'm back in it— even just momentarily. I really think about the pictures I want to make while present.
More times than not, when I’m shooting, it’s about the approach of what a trip feels like, not just looks like. It’s the in-between moments. The raw exhausted ones, the mini shred ones, the quieter moments of a stranger walking into the cold blue environment with contrastingly beautiful red hair. Pictures that make me want to go snowboarding, or on a trip with a squad. Where and when are the examples of other cultures or ways of life, how do I exist in them?
I’ve never been into (nor that great at) just documenting the peak action. I’ve always been much more interested in the sub0-culture. Specifically in ways that Ari, Mathis, Zacher, and Brunkhart really set early on for me. These are images I made for myself, no brand and logos attached or alternative motives, just photographs I want to contribute to the culture—or perhaps a homage to the heads above.
They are not groundbreaking, they are just honest and consistent in a language I’ve been visually communicating for a long time. They act as small prints I'm sequencing away in one large sketchbook which someday I’ll revisit as a whole. They’re the magnet that keeps me grounded and returning time and time again, every so often at random.
