WILD PLACE: People of kingston, vol.1

ABOUT THE PROJECT: My wife Tereza and I recently moved back to Kingston after a decade away. We can see a lot of changes, with surely more to come. It seems like an important moment for this gritty small town.

Although my life has been a wild ride through a kaleidoscope of experiences, it is my roots in photojournalism coupled with a family history steeped in community activism that is at the core of my work: the finding and telling stories of how people live and express themselves. Which inevitably leads me to where they live – the place they call home. To their community. And now, to Kingston.

So I am very interested in understanding our new community and finding connections in the midst of our transition. According to Bloomberg Businessweek, there are more artists per capita here than any city in America. There are a host of new world-class restaurants, tech startups and new factory-to-loft conversions. Young people, families and retirees are arriving every week from New York City, Austin, Seattle and even San Francisco. They are embracing and revitalizing this beat up old river town, taking risks and making new lives here, just as we are.

And as someone who has spent more than my fair share of time documenting risk-takers and innovators blowing everything up to start all over, maybe this is why I am back in Kingston at this moment of flux, to shoot this new multi-media project. Wild Place features the local residents revealing not only their aspirations, but also what they love about the town or what they might change about it.

Change is exciting, yet it’s also true that growth means that the challenge of gentrification is rising along with income disparity. Concerns about these issues are apparent in some of the interviews that follow in these pages. Others see growth as a net positive.

Ultimately as a visual storyteller, my role is witness but also messenger. This project is a way for me to continue to explore stories that reveal our shared fates and the richness of what is in-between — those milliseconds of another person’s reality that maybe nobody else will notice, but I do.

When I look back on the places we’ve lived over the years (maybe 13 or 14 moves over the last decade) it was always the relationships that made a place our home. I believe that for a community to be a home, it will always need to be a place where you can be your true self. Where one is comfortable to share one’s fears, hopes and visions of the future; and that ultimately by helping others, one helps oneself. It is from these beliefs that the Wild Place project was borne — yes a new neighbor’s calling card, but it has definitely helped us start to feel at home here.

My forever thanks to everyone who has readily agreed to participate as well to those who will agree to participate in the future. And a special thanks to artist Deborah Mills Thackrey for welcoming me back and for producing the project.