Gaming Buddies — PS2 Era, 2004

A scanned photograph placed on a worn brown leather journal cover, the photo filling nearly the entire frame with only a thin natural border visible on all sides. The photograph depicts: Grungy analog flash photo, single-use Walgreens camera, circa 2004. Two friends — a young person with short dark hair and warm brown skin grinning with a snapback on backwards, and a tall lanky Black teenager with an afro pick tucked in his hair wearing a white tall tee and baggy low-rise jeans with boxers showing, throwing a sideways hand gesture with a straight face — on a low futon in a college dorm room, both holding black PlayStation 2 DualShock 2 controllers. On the small TV balanced on a mini-fridge, GTA San Andreas is on screen — CJ on a BMX bike in Grove Street, the pixelated HUD visible. The dorm room: a Bob Marley flag tacked to the cinder block wall, a desk lamp with a red bandana draped over it casting warm amber, a stack of burned CDs in a spindle, a half-empty bottle of Mountain Dew Code Red, a silver Motorola Razr plugged in on the floor. Harsh flash kills all ambient mood — flat bright skin tones, hard shadow outlines on the wall. Heavy grain, slight blue-green color shift, red-eye on the tall guy. The energy of 2 AM on a Tuesday. Natural skin texture with subtle pores and micro-imperfections, organic asymmetry in features. --ar 4:5