Photography
A photo is the closest thing to magic realism we can get.
We don’t ‘take’ photographs. We ‘make’ photographs. It is not a reductive act. It is additive.
Chase, Grace, Zoey, Jack and Mother, Nikon D50, Ibiza, Spain, July 19 2007.
Personal Projects
Arizona, Bolinas and Beyond
My interest in photography has increased tenfold thanks to the sermons I heard, preached by Stanford professor Alexander Nemerov in his course, ‘American Photographs: A Magical History’ in which I was exposed to the likes of Lewis Hine, Alec Soth, and Margaret Bourke-White and other monumentally important photographers. My own personal projects, as displayed below, have been an absolute joy to direct and execute. I spent this year exploring my style and training my eye - my only parameter being, ‘what do I think about this photo?”.
'My Cousin in Arizona', 2024
Arizona has been a constant in my otherwise English life. My mother’s parents, the head honchos of the Morales family, have lived in a wooden house on a long drive since I can remember. My siblings - the Flynns - were their only grandkids who resisted spending holidays in the house. Similarly, we are the only grandkids with a white last name. The Olazabal, Hernandez and Morales children spent most every summer and winter in the house. We were also the only grandkids across the Pond, a 10-hour flight away. My eldest brother would cite this distance when he petitioned against the trip… and yet, the Morales children would voyage from Sao Paolo, Brazil - a 12-hour flight - twice a year with no complaint. The Flynns inevitably became the ‘periphery cousins’. As young adults, we held our Hands Across America to close the separation between us. Hannah, Jake, Jack, Chase, Marcos, Zoey, Chris, Grace, Lucas, Nick, Sienna, Chico. All affectionately known as mija, foo, huevón by our grandfather.
In the woodland behind the house, I took this photograph of my cousin Marcos Morales, 22, in early August. I dressed him up as me - my foxhat, my deutschland scarf - an exercise in closing the emotional gap between us. It’s all to say: I am you, you are me, and we are what we are.
'Girls Don't Grill', 2025
'Untitled', 2025
A few truths about my dad: he’s eternally busy, categorically scatterbrained, and shows affection through cooking. It’s something I wasn’t aware of for the first tensome years of my life. He’d work through the week in a suit and tie in his London office, then drive 60 miles to Oxfordshire on the weekend to cook a Sunday Roast for my siblings and me. When I fly home to England to see him, I wake up with a date smoothie at my door. My dad used to make jokes about how he’s ‘not a short-order cook’, but in looking back, I remember how he would take care to scramble my morning eggs, fry my brothers’, and poach my sister’s. There was also a time, that we laugh about a lot, where he spent six months making different variations of meringue, every night demanding that we sample his newest batch. To this day, none of us have eaten meringue since. In those six months, we ate enough of those delicious, whipped, sugary desserts to turn us off them for life.
These photos: in January of this year, we went to visit my sick grandfather in Colorado, and in the freezing cold of the morning, my dad was outside at the grill fixing him tri-tip steak. A scene (and an act) that is so identifiably my dad that it makes me homesick with love for him.
'Kenhouse (at Night)', 2025
'Alma Pater', 2025
Another truth about my dad: he was raised in a trailer-park. He was born in San Diego, on his older sister’s birthday. His father left when he was one. His mother moved them to the tumbleweed, 2000-person town of Wickenburg and left when he was eight. He was raised by with six other children by a man called Rick Blakeley, my Grandpa Rick, in the Arizonan heat.
My desert dad (like many) longed for California. By forty-five, he had saved enough money to build his dream home in San Diego. To redefine what San Diego was to him. And so he did, and since I moved to the United States at eighteen, I have lived in his Kenhouse. Photographed (left) is my brother and our family dog, each on either side of the sliding doors that separate the dining room (a round table by the stove) and the backyard. My brother is making me dinner, and my dog (and I) are watching. Photographed (right) are My Dad and His Son, as I lovingly call them, whisking and basting.
'Nosebleeds', 2025
My great-grandmother was born on November 11th, 1918 and lived until she was 106. My dad retains that she was the most present and reliable woman in his life, a real matriarch whose memorial was attended by fifty people. We sat in the back, in the nosebleeds, on the outskirts of the family as the Flynns generally are. At the core: my uncles, my aunts and my Grandpa Rick. What struck me was that my dad, just as close with his grandmother as the rest, chose to sit in the back. Whether it was borne from emotional closure, or a desire to not draw attention to himself, I can’t parse. Photographed, again, are My Dad and His Son, the former wiping a wordless tear from his vigil-candle face.
'Susan's Brother', 2025
My grandfather, Timothy. He has two brothers, Terry and Tom. And named his son, my father, Timothy too. Timothy Two. My grandfather also (once) had a sister named Susan. When Susan was a six, she was in the backseat of a car that didn’t cross a railroad in time. Everyone in the car was killed on impact. I hear from Susan’s nephew and niece (my grandfather’s son and daughter, my own father and aunt) that Susan’s death was not something the family recovered from. So there was left Terry, Tom, Tim, and a Wound.
'Strange Girls ... Where Do They Come From?' 2024
Marcos’ sister, one of two of my only female cousins, Sienna Morales, 17, wearing my plankton shirt, my wolfhat and holding in a Halloweeny bucket her own tail. This was another exercise in seeing myself in my family. Sienna, my third youngest cousin, is growing into one of the most interesting women in the world. Her strangeness - a gift - is something to be celebrated. As a teenager, I sometimes felt the need to self-immolate to make of myself a lamp for others. In my study of her, I’ve observed that this girl's light is not violent or an act of martyrdom, rather a gentle glow…like a star, a guiding lighthouse. I am constantly thinking of this girl, what she will achieve, what she will learn and who she will teach.
'Chlorine', 2024
My thanksgiving this year was spent predominantly alone, in an emptying house on Cowell Lane. One evening, driving between my old dorm and new, I noticed one streetlamp that shone brighter than its neighbours. I was taken by the chlorine-white light, and urgently enlisted my friend Iyanu to take a walk with me after dinner. Stopping at the light, I instructed her to take a photograph of me - one of the only times I’ve been the subject and not the scribe. As the shutter snapped close, a mindless exhalation formed into an apparition, a spirit-form escaping my lungs.
'Kinko's', 2024
'Marathon Gas', 2024
(Top) My brother, Chase, 24, wearing my owlhat and our father’s kinko’s sweater. We drove up and down a Big Hill, searching for our aunt’s missing dog who had bolted that morning. An enormous, dry skeleton of a spring tree had been cut out of the ground, unceremoniously left for dead by the side of the road. As we climbed up the slope, I asked him if he would stand still for a second so I could make a photo of him. Classically, charmingly, he could not. I decided that the mid-sentence, mid-scratch snap was much better than a sanitized, posed photo would have been.
(Bottom) About thirty minutes later, we stopped at Marathon Gas Station to refill our grandmother’s 1992 Ford Explorer and to buy a case of Modelos. Outside, two female bikers approached me to compliment the colour of my hair. I loved the shape of their bikes and their space-earth suits, asking timidly if I could make a photo of them. A smile and a nod, three or four clicks of my camera, a thank you and they were off. As they turned to leave, I raised my camera again, resulting in this image. In the background, with his backwards cap and vampiric paleness, my brother Chase looking out toward the Big Hill. Another strange Arizonan dreamscape.
'Abby at Bolinas', canon rebel t6i, 2024
'Bolinas Day', canon rebel t6i, 2024
A beautiful day in Bolinas, with Abby Banks, one of the most personable and kind women I have ever met. I was introduced to Abby through my sculpture teacher and I had no concept of how perfect the match would be. On this day, we drove 1hr30mins from Dogpatch, San Francisco all the way to Bolinas, past the Golden Gate Bridge and over an expanse of cliffside woodland, arriving firmly at 1pm on the day. We packed cyanotype chemicals, transparency papers, a giant glass sheet, three large treatment containers and a bunch of photosensitive paper. We set up camp between a walkway and the shore, using large rocks to create a makeshift darkroom on the ground. Abby packed tuna salad, boiled potatoes and bubbly water and we watched strangers, young and old, meander along the waterline. We stayed for about 4 hours. I brought two different cameras and we shot three pinhole photographs before we left.
Fashion and Editorial Photography
FORTYTWO CO LLC and Stanford FashionX
Between September 2023-June 2024, I had my introduction to photography. My two fellow co-founders, both Computer Science majors, had no fine art background (although both had the desire and gusto to produce and create), and so when it came time to divide the artistic labor required of us, I found myself happily assuming the role of Director of Marketing and Media.
Since our brand at the time was significantly smaller than it has grown to be today, I found within my role responsibilities a perfect opportunity to become a grassroots photographer - after all, we needed editorial and product shots of our work. Equipped with just my 7-year-old Canon Rebel T6i, I got to work learning the principles of composition, lighting and staging. My introduction to photography was certainly a Baptism by Fire, but I simply wouldn’t have had it any other way.
All photographs below were shot by myself, with ample freedom to execute my vision how I saw fit. My two co-founders attended each shoot but generally gave me the space to direct both myself and my models, given their trust in my ability to deliver interesting and unique materials.
(Above, left) This photo was exclusively selected by GQ Brazil’s marketing team for a feature on February 18th 2024.
As well as this, my co-founders and I amassed 2.2 million views on our first TikTok video, and currently have over 450,000 likes on our account. We also enjoyed offers of marketing features from high-profile curation pages such as highsnobiety, NSSSsports, 8by8MAG, avntspace, culturfits and more. Moreover, celebrities like Jessica Macrina, Kaleb Ohlemacher, Zulan and Justin Bieber bought, wore and posted themselves in our shirts. We did not reach out to any of them, rather, they found us. A post by Bieber where his pregnant wife Hailey wore our Brazil jersey (see right) itself amassed almost 10 million unique likes.
'Backdoor Dealing', FOOTYTWO Capsule for FORTYTWO CO LLC, canon rebel t6i, 2024
This was our first real narrative photoshoot. My responsibilities for this shoot included conceptualization, scheduling, casting, set design, crew selection and prop coordination, art direction, camera operation, post-production editing and deliverable selection. While my co-founders were generally laissez-faire with my photo directing, this shoot underlined their trust in me to create something special for the brand.
In April 2024, we received a wholesale deal from Free People and enjoyed collaborations with the likes of Crenshaw Skate Club and BasicSpace. These accolades were the satisfying results of my whole team’s hard work and the media campaigns that I spearheaded.
FOOTYTWO Capsule by FORTYTWO CO LLC, canon rebel t6i, 2024
FOOTYTWO Capsule by FORTYTWO CO LLC, canon rebel t6i, 2023
FOOTYTWO Capsule by FORTYTWO CO LLC, canon rebel t6i, 2023
'Fall of Troy' (1/4), canon g7xiii, 2024
'Fall of Troy' (2/4), canon g7xiii, 2024
'Fall of Troy' (3/4), canon g7xiii, 2024
'Fall of Troy' (4/4), canon g7xiii, 2024
Sort of on a whim - but also for my body of work for my sculpture class - I created a 8x2x6’ Trojan Horse made out of cardboard. To be frank, I was motivated by the desire to create a really kick-ass Halloween costume for 2024, and thought, what better way to draw attention to myself than to build an enormous horse I can ride into a party on? It was really only by luck and coincidence that my project proposal was approved by my teaching staff, so thank God for that.
To compliment my sculpture, I chose to enlist a group of close friends to model alongside it in a sort of spoof-photoshoot where we pretended to be Roman soldiers messing around with the horse before ultimately being slain by the hidden Greek soldiers inside. This sculpture was a hit on Halloween, although it did become a battered piñata pretty quickly.
I hope for this to be the first of many pieces of gag-art that I create.
Stanford FashionX Runway Event, 2024
Stanford FashionX Runway Event, 2024
In January 2024 I was approached by Stanford FashionX’s club presidents to take on the role of Director of Photography for their biggest event of the year, the Stanford FashionX Runway Event (this year, February 22th 2024). I recruited a team of 6 talented student photographers through my own network and briefed them on my vision for the event. Directing my team was very satisfying, as it gave me a chance to demonstrate my ability to motivate and organize others, both to the FashionX cohort and to the wider Stanford student body. Above are my photographs published by FashionX on social media and in their newsletter.