“I’m good, how are u?” by Photographer Dorian Tocker

A collection of photographs about finding the strange beauty in the decay of the ordinary by artist and filmmaker Dorian Tocker. Born in Brooklyn and currently based in Los Angeles, Tocker holds an MFA in Directing from the American Film Institute, where he studied with Oscar-winning director Asghar Farhadi. His work reveals the poetry hiding in plain sight. “I’m good, how are u?” features photographs paired in playful conversation with each other. Taken on his phone in cities across the globe, the quality of the images emphasize the quotidian nature of the subjects–an “unfussed-over” time capsule in the spirit of photographers like Stephen Shore.

“When I was 14, my father died suddenly in his sleep in our Brooklyn home. I stepped outside to soothe my grief, finding the city abuzz that summer morning, the concrete dappled by orange beams of sun pushing through wispy clouds in a sapphire sky. Paradoxically, my pain heightened my awareness of the sublimity lurking in the everyday, to the beauty within the bitterness. Sharing this contradictory experience has been the driving force of my work.”