I watched C’mon C’mon with Joaquin Phoenix and it clicked for me how black and white film can pull more meaning out of an image, not less. At first, the idea of stripping color away felt sad to me. Like something was missing.

But I was going through a difficult time when I started this project. I was stripping away a lot of things I’d given too much meaning to, and in that process, space opened up for what actually mattered. Black and white started feeling less like absence and more like clarity.

Shooting this helped me realize what those things were. The ones that matter.

I shot it in Flagstaff, Arizona.