“BeachGames”. Playa del Carmen. Fact or fiction? I’m at home now going through all that I shot recently in Mexico. Assembling a sequence. Writing a novella with pictures. It’s the same as writing a song or short story. It’s not simply about each single picture, but how they all come together as a photo essay. How to tweak the imagination? I stopped my BeachGames zine over a year ago thinking I was finished. I thought since it was a zine I’d do it fast. Yet after I made a layout/dummy, I saw that even though BG was only going to be about 25 pictures, it was going to be harder than if it was a book of 100. Shorter does not mean easier. Quite the contrary. E.B. White’s ” Elements of Style” always in my head. Hemingway’s “Old Man and the Sea” and “A Clean Well Lighted Place” always hanging over me. Sofia Cuppola’s ” Lost in Translation” and Nan Goldin’s “Ballad of Sexual Dependency” always benchmarks. While pure documentary has been a big part of my life and work, in recent years I’ve put high value and effort into “fiction” storytelling as the only way to really tell the truth. Yet in the freedom of fiction there can’t be one single note off key. No editors to blame if it’s not right. No gatekeepers. It’s weird. I may wish for “acceptance” as we all do, yet I am not trying to appease anyone. Take it or leave it. Yet I still must get it right. I’m editing in the opposite environment of the shooting. Home alone. No party. Winter. Bliss. Fire in the belly.