As a kid my family traveled up to my grandparent’s farm for both Thanksgiving and Christmas.  On one of those trips, I found in their house a large, hard bound book of Norman Rockwell’s work, and was instantly transfixed by it.  Even as a child I recognized how concisely he captured large volumes of social commentary and insight in a single moment. 

In much of his work, he captured moments of bliss.  His pictures and paintings depicted an event that many could relate to, but that event was reproduced in it’s most perfect circumstances (i.e., the perfect Thanksgiving, the perfect wedding proposal, the perfect summer day).  However, his range extended beyond humanity’s joyous occasions to include occasions born out of the darker side of the human mind; the issues over which we fought and killed one another also came into his lens and under his brush. As always, he captured these events in the most succinct and precise way, saying volumes with a single image.

As a videographer, I have been fascinated by the many ways people use the medium of video to tell a story.  Over the past 6 months, I have been particularly drawn to the challenge of telling an informative and engaging story through video, but without any dialogue - no interviews, no voice-overs, just imagery, in combination with the sound that comes with it and music.

 In my most recent project on the city and culture of Seattle, I realized there was a great parallel in what I was trying to create and what I find interesting in Rockwell’s work. As I walked around different parts of Seattle over the course of 7 days, I shot whatever caught my eye.  I saw an artist on a hilltop painting the skyline of Seattle. I saw a man on heroin who could not stand. When I opened my eyes to look at the world with a Rockwellian perspective, I found that I was surrounded by moments and snapshots of the human experience.  This piece on Seattle is the attempt to weave these moments together in a way that hopefully gives the viewer another insight into the vast range of the human experience, and hopefully to do it in an interesting way.

Click here to view:    Simply Seattle