The thinking that goes into constructed portraiture is closely related to the thinking that goes into building a brand or directing a film: how to compose belief, shape attention, and construct an image that feels true.
Over more than fifteen years in art direction, documentary and commercial filmmaking, and creative leadership, I have learned how to direct people, build visual systems, guide a process, and carry complex projects from idea to finished form. That work has made me a sharper image-maker — more fluent in how images persuade, perform, and hold together.
Open to selective freelance and editorial collaborations.
In 2011, I co-founded the Brooklyn-based production studio THEY with my creative partner Christy Pessagno. Through 2021, we made documentary-driven films, photography, and branded content for artists, makers, institutions, and cultural organizations. Our clients included the Vilcek Foundation, Ford Foundation, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The New York Times, Penguin Books, Etsy, NYU, Columbia, NASA, and the Lucie Foundation.
For the Vilcek Foundation, we produced documentary profiles of more than forty prize recipients across art, science, theater, fashion, food, and design. Featured subjects included artists Meleko Mokgosi and Nari Ward; fashion curator Andrew Bolton and art historian Carmen Bambach; chef Marcus Samuelsson and food writer Tejal Rao; and theater director Blanka Zizka.
The work was rooted in sustained observation, intimate portraiture, and the visual rhythms of people at work in their craft. It drew on the same instincts that run through my studio practice: how to frame a person inside a world, how to listen for what an image is actually about, and how to make something feel observed rather than packaged.
To view more THEY work, visit the archive at theybklyn.com.
THEY, selected stills from documentary work, 2011–2021
THEY, selected stills from documentary work, 2011–2021
In 2021, I joined Teamshares as one of its first ten employees. The company was building a new model for employee ownership in small businesses — restaurants, HVAC companies, auto shops, printing companies — buying them from retiring founders and gradually transitioning ownership to the workers inside.
From 2021 to 2024, I led the creative content department, building a team of twelve working across video, photography, design, and editorial. We produced films, campaigns, internal communications, and stories that translated complex ideas — succession, equity, shared ownership — into language and images people could recognize themselves inside.
At its best, the work was about making invisible structures visible: how businesses change hands, how workers become owners, and how people begin to imagine themselves inside a new system. It was proof of how images build belief, translate abstraction into human terms, and help people recognize the structures they are being asked to enter.
Teamshares, selected stills and portraits, 2021–2024