Please say hello to first-time contributor Mike Cullen, a photographer based in Brooklyn, NY, who specializes in abstract and impressionistic landscapes. After a few decades of working in the photo industry, Mike decided it was finally time to move from the business and editing side over to the creative. He’s been working on an extensive series of images that share some common stylistic threads: they’re blurry, there are no people, the subject matter is kept at some distance, and yet the colors are fairly vibrant. It wasn’t until much later (and many photographs) that he was diagnosed with depression. After his diagnosis, when he looked back on his work, he realized that these images were a manifestation of the illness. The out-of-focus, lonely, people-less world he had been photographing wasn’t in the park down the street. It was in him.

About this photo: “The two images above are called, “Gods and Monsters” (the darker one) and “Because I Could Not Stop For Death”. These images were shot earlier in 2014 using a panoramic pinhole camera onto 35mm film, then extensively tinkered with in Photoshop. I find that it’s not until I have a chance to closely examine and work on the images on my desktop that I can get a sense of what my subconscious is telling me; these two seem to bookend each other with dark and light, yet still offer a distorted take on reality.”

Find more from Mike at his website.

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