If you’ve been reading my blog then you must know that art is a very big part of my life. People often ask me, after seeing my accessories collection, which bags I would save in the event of a fire and my answer would vary depending on my mood. But the truth is, once I got everyone out of harm’s way the one thing I’d try to save in a fire would be the paintings hanging on my walls. I may not have a Degas in my house (yet), but original works of art, no matter how small or how grand, are a much greater source of joy to me. They are why vision is my favorite out of all 5 senses. Think about it, which one is your favorite sense? I can live without being able to taste, hear, smell, or touch, but not being able to see? That would be tragic.

Anyway, I can draw something if my life depended on it, but I was definitely not born an artist. So all the visuals constantly swimming about in my head basically stay there; I have no talent or skill to recreate them onto any single medium. But enter the digital camera, and suddenly sometimes I can take a bit of credit in snapping some great photos of a given moment in time whether by chance or by conspiracy. When I’m traveling, it’s easy to photograph beauty, both nature- and man-made. There’s so much out there that it’s as easy as point and click.

When I’m grounded, however, I like to use photography to document all the mundane things in life that bear witness to our lives. Good, bad, and boring. Twenty years from the day you take a single photo of your parents nudging each other over an inside joke or of your kid brother crying from falling off a bicycle, such photos become much more than mementos of an ordinary day gone by. They become recorded history, and if you start to take a lot of videos, these moments become living history.

No idea why I am writing all of this (maybe because I have been looking at old photos all morning while cleaning up the folders on my desktop) because originally I meant to write an introduction to the photos in today’s blog entry. What I really meant to talk about today was the back story for the FIMTSO series. About the terrible habit I have of buying an item in multiple colors when I could (maybe should) spend the same amount of money on a variety of items instead. But sometimes, when you have a good gig going, like matching Converse sneakers with Chanel bags, you wonder if Imelda Marcos didn’t have it right after all.

PS: After seeing these pictures, maybe I would save a couple of bags along with the art in a fire!