Michael George is 21 and no, that’s not a good thing.ML: You’ve had a tough couple years. How has it affected your photography?MG: There’s just more of it. When you start losing things, people, time… images become the best way to hold onto it all. A lot of people think of the camera as a distancing tool. That you put it between yourself and what’s actually happening. It’s like being depressed and going to sleep instead of dealing with your problems. I don’t believe in any of that. My camera is a microscope, if anything. It’s always with me, ready to examine. My problem is that I can’t think think until late at night once everyone else has gone to bed. Instead of lying awake, churning memories in my head, I flit through photographs. I group them in different ways, by emotion, by person, by time period. You can’t really do that with memories, I wish you could.ML: Your statement in From the Left is haunting. How certain is it? Does it scare you?MG: Who knows. I’m banking on science to find a cure before I have to worry about it. Regardless, I’ve already been in the hospital 3 or 4 times. Kidney stones, staph infections, a tear in my chest wall. Oh and I once cut off the tip of my thumb with a paper cutter. I’m now a hypochondriac.ML: What have been some of your favourite moments in your photography?MG: Well, I’m currently working on a portrait project using an 8 x 10 camera. The first time I ever looked at a person through a Deardorff, I knew everything would change. I’ve always read about photographer’s revelatory moments, like their first time seeing a print develop, when they gasp and feel as if fate has just slapped them in the face. “That’s bullshit,” I thought. But no. Large format cameras are magic. They transform the world into something even more beautiful. Alice should have gone through the ground glass.ML: Where do you see yourself in five years?MG: Let’s see, that would be January 12th, 2015. There’s two answers here:The Mayan answer: Dead.The preferable answer: Waking up, knowing what I’m going to photograph (and getting paid to photograph it), working hard, enjoying friends, and magically forgetting everything that keeps me feeling like a Koosh ball of stress.

Michael George is 21 and no, that’s not a good thing.

ML: You’ve had a tough couple years. How has it affected your photography?
MG: There’s just more of it. When you start losing things, people, time… images become the best way to hold onto it all. A lot of people think of the camera as a distancing tool. That you put it between yourself and what’s actually happening. It’s like being depressed and going to sleep instead of dealing with your problems. I don’t believe in any of that. My camera is a microscope, if anything. It’s always with me, ready to examine. My problem is that I can’t think think until late at night once everyone else has gone to bed. Instead of lying awake, churning memories in my head, I flit through photographs. I group them in different ways, by emotion, by person, by time period. You can’t really do that with memories, I wish you could.

ML: Your statement in From the Left is haunting. How certain is it? Does it scare you?
MG: Who knows. I’m banking on science to find a cure before I have to worry about it. Regardless, I’ve already been in the hospital 3 or 4 times. Kidney stones, staph infections, a tear in my chest wall. Oh and I once cut off the tip of my thumb with a paper cutter. I’m now a hypochondriac.

ML: What have been some of your favourite moments in your photography?
MG: Well, I’m currently working on a portrait project using an 8 x 10 camera. The first time I ever looked at a person through a Deardorff, I knew everything would change. I’ve always read about photographer’s revelatory moments, like their first time seeing a print develop, when they gasp and feel as if fate has just slapped them in the face. “That’s bullshit,” I thought. But no. Large format cameras are magic. They transform the world into something even more beautiful. Alice should have gone through the ground glass.

ML: Where do you see yourself in five years?
MG: Let’s see, that would be January 12th, 2015. There’s two answers here:
The Mayan answer: Dead.
The preferable answer: Waking up, knowing what I’m going to photograph (and getting paid to photograph it), working hard, enjoying friends, and magically forgetting everything that keeps me feeling like a Koosh ball of stress.