Served Seasons

akin to 🌊

Ramblings

Juan A. Franco Ricardo. Night Shot (Brooklyn Window), 2024. Digital photograph. [A rather red hue haunts the image, almost like being inside a belly or a whale. A incandescent lamp reflects on the window revealing a street through the window and also a brick wall in the room. To the left of the window, an even redder rain jacket hangs alongside a yellow baseball cap worn a thousand too many times. A few light beams peer through a black box nestled near the jacket. A figure emerges with reflected windows from their belly.]

in returning to a place where they ask you, where have you been? it’s been a while. that feels like a nice place to sit and have a drink. tomorrow i am flying to one of my homes, seattle, a place where i have spent the majority of my life, so far. there is something about the memory of place that both cradles and haunts the deep, deep belly. in the return to home(?), i often find myself at an impossible distance to what has happened since i left — not just in this place, but in the lives of those that this place meant a great deal. not everyone is still here. not everyone has left. not everyone will return. i’ve done all i could, it’s what i say to make it better. to both let it go and to hold on to hope. a soundscape of a sea escape, the promise of an ocean after the mountains, a promised land almost found after leaving home, lost because of a pride and ego, discovering the sea while not even looking for it, a disappointing success or a successful disappointment. 🌊.

i had hope for a(n) (re)encounter,
under the ghost white of her light.

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Studio

Juan A. Franco Ricardo. Self Portrait with Torso, 2024. Digital photograph. [A divided black and white image between a reflection and a drawing. Each frame holding a body made of light, made of charcoal. On the left, a drawing made by the author and subject in 2018 — an isolated and sculpted torso. On the right, the author seated looking away from the reflection — an isolated and sculpted torso. The frame of each image angled towards a point not met in the center.]

it began with self portraiture, the act of setting up the scene, thinking about the light, and waiting patiently for the sound of the shutter. a sort of relief and release of the capture moment. my room as a teenager served a studio, revealing more about myself than i could i ever know. with a constantly changing backdrop of magazine pages taped on the wall, the remodeling of the architecture by my mother’s hands, and the aesthetic arrangements of the furniture that was never right, but served a season. lately i have felt a need to return to something, or maybe start something again. in looking at myself, over and over again, in these photographs, i feel like i am reaching, ever closer to finding an edge of resolve. i don’t know or remember what the first self portrait resembles, but it doesn’t seem like much has changed since then.

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Scraps