CAMERA DIARY Midsummer 2024

By Will Simpson.

Summer is full of light problems. Perhaps ‘light tensions’ is more proper. I mean bright light will be in your eyes, direct or in the rear view mirror. Fighting you. Perhaps your hand comes up to your face to shade it, or the sunglasses descend upon your nose from their position on your head. The photographs Will took last summer are full of this kind of thing: sunhats on heads and outlines carved thickly on the sand at Coney Island, a body twisting as if away from the sun to create its own curving shadow world. A tall man in Manhattan with an eye patch on and sunglasses over the eye patch is nonetheless obviously looking at you. I like the violent light of evening in these photographs too, the flash hitting the stone cemetery eagle with a back of the hand flatness; the flash hitting the underside of a pink cowboy hat; headlights fighting egg moon dripping down the wall of night.

—Jo Livingstone

[© Will Simpson 2024]