Man of the House

This semester I was taking documentary photo and the following images are selections from the larger series called "man of the house". Stephen is a 21 year old living at home with his mother and working as a waiter in a local restaurant. As I began shooting, I wanted to document this person in relation to the working class and within the context of our capitalist economy. However, my project then became centered on Steve's life when I realized I was spending more time with him outside of his place of employment. He is financially independent from both parents and often feels out of place at home. I wanted to show the other side of Steve, what is actually going on in his head, issues he deals with everyday but no one else sees. The series is a work in progress as I would like to document his life over the course of three years. For this work I shot with a DSLR and converted to black and white photos when I was editing. There is also little photoshop used on the photographs as I wanted to preserve the original content of the image and stay true to the traditional documentary style. And for the record for you film crazies, I would have shot film, should have too, but you know how it goes, time is money. Thanks Ben Frank.