In September of 2015, Rachel Cook and I embarked on a journey that was a part of a decades-long collaboration and became the spark for The Voltaire Diaries. It was the kind of European summer that feels suspended in time, warm afternoons rolling into long nights, every moment soaked in salt water and possibility. During that trip, I wrote in a notebook. Small entries at first. Observations. Feelings. Fragments of something I did not yet understand. Those pages would later become the heartbeat of my work.

Those summers in Italy blur now at the edges. Sunlight sliding over tiled rooftops. Church bells drifting from faraway towers. The taste of apricots is still warm from the tree. Heat trapped in the stone by late afternoon. Nights that felt like promises. Days that felt like they would never end until suddenly they did. During that time, I photographed everything. I shot short films that I didn’t remember taking. More than thirty thousand frames and nearly a mile of footage. Some were taken and scattered across the internet, living separate lives of their own. Some remained hidden for years. Others were never meant to be seen at all. Not because they were imperfect. But because they belonged to a version of you that no longer exists.

 

 

 

 

 

 

What remained from that summer became this series. Photographs, notes, and moments gathered along the way, held together by the places that shaped them.

About This Series

I’m not trying to tell you these stories exactly as they happened. Only as I remember them.
These pages were written in fragments, notes, and impressions. Moments caught between photographs.

Welcome to the Voltaire Diaries. New pages every week. Enter the diary →

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