Hello there, welcome to the Photography Archive!

We are starting with a single photography gallery. Over time, as I have the bandwidth, I will be adding more of my travel photography, architectural observations, and other hobby photography! But today, we start with just one trip.

We are opening the Archive with Barcelona, January 2016.

At the time, I was deep in my Master's degree. I had carved out a few days to wander the city completely alone before flying to Istanbul to meet up with my classmates for a highly intense interior design studio trip. Group travel, especially in a competitive academic setting, is the ultimate "Front Stage." It requires constant performance, constant masking, and a lot of cortisol.

But wandering Barcelona alone? That was pure "Back Stage." I didn't have to perform for an audience. I was just an anonymous man trying to regulate my nervous system in a foreign city.

Looking back at these photos nearly a decade later, with the vocabulary of a WELL AP, I realize I wasn't just taking pictures of pretty Catalan buildings. I was documenting my body's search for safety.

I was pointing my camera at the heavy, sweeping brick arches of Gaudí's Casa Milà because my anxious brain was desperate for Refuge. For Geborgenheit (that deep, primal feeling of being held and protected). I was photographing narrow stone corridors because of thigmotaxis, the human instinct to hug the walls to avoid feeling exposed. And I was obsessively capturing pools of high-contrast winter sunlight because my jet-lagged pineal gland was hunting for Zeitgebers, the environmental light cues our bodies need to anchor our circadian rhythms.

Long before we can design a home that treats us with kindness, we have to learn how to actually look at the built environment. We have to recognize that our bodies are constantly acting as sensors, reading the architecture around us for threats and comforts.

More galleries will come. But for now, take a breath, drop your shoulders, and come wander these corridors with me.

Stay safe, stay froh.