The top three worst things that can happen during any given day at Fashion Week:

1: Hit by a car at or on your way to a show.

2: Security Guard or aggressive paparazzi pushes you or your camera.

3: While taking a photo of something, you see out of the corner of your eye that Jonathan Daniel Pryce is photographing the same thing. You lower your camera, realize the futility of your attempt. Call it a day, and head home. There is no way…NO way, that your photo can compete with his. Pack up and leave.

I’ve had all these things happen during FW. I remember the #3s better than the #1s

(Insider note for empathy: Noor, I know your ranking system may differ from mine)

To put it simply, seeing Jonathan’s work is one of the main driving forces that keeps me going in this job. Seeing the few images which we, the plebeians, are graced with, gives hope that there is more to this running around the world chasing this beast called “Fashion Week”.

If you’re not familiar with Jonathan’s work, just stop reading this right now and head over to @GarconJon on Instagram to get yourself up to speed.

Ok, are you back? Good, right!? Ok let’s continue.

When paleontologists and archeologists and geologists refer to time, they often refer to lines of sediment found in the layers of the earth as they dig. These lines can be evidence of a sea that once stood in that place. An ice age. A flood. A fire. Lines of time.

I often refer to time as “Pre-internet”, “Pre-COVID”. “Pre-Instagram”. These eras are broken up into smaller parcels such as, for example, regarding the internet, 14.4, 28.8, 56k, Ethernet, etc. In reference to my career and interest in Fashion Week, I use terms such as…nevermind, this is getting too complicated. What I’m trying to say is I use Jonathan’s images as date markers.

There is a photo of Blake Abbie standing near a red traffic light. It’s low-light and his head is tilted slight up towards the sky. The red light floods the frame and dyes his skin in an even and unhuman ruby bath. This photo left a mark on me in late 2019.

There is a photo of Richard Biedul looking through a magnifying glass, his eye distorted by the curve of the lens. This is the line that fashion geologists would date to late 2018.

Scientists will date early 2020 with an image of a low full moon rising at dusk over Fondazione Prada on Largo Isarco in Milan.

Every year, photographers mark January and June by a photo of Florence’s Duomo. Shown in the perfect light, and always from the perfect angle.

There are photos of clouds, and fluorescent signs. Pigeons and seagulls. Each of them is unique and special, and each leave a trace, like sediment from a flash flood.

And there is one photo which truly stops time for me. Nearly an extinction event. On 10 September 2018, in deep Brooklyn before the Eckhaus Latta show, there is a photo of two men handing a cigarette between them as a third man walks through the transit path of the carcinogenic exchange. The third man stares into the camera. I was there. I saw it happen. However, my photo is a waste of server space in comparison to the contrapposto triumph shown by Jonathan.

Before all this there was a photo of me. Taken on Quai d’Austerlitz outside of the IFM. I was wearing a blackish-blueish suede Paul Harnden jacket. My hair is longer, and my beard is bigger. I’m wearing a black T shirt from either Damir Doma or Odin Vovk. My Nikon D4 perched on my forearm. I’m wearing rings and bracelets, and I’m looking slightly to the left.

That was the first time I met Jonathan Daniel Pryce. I do not know what year, but I remember the whole encounter. I remember how weird it felt to hold the camera in the way he instructed me to hold it. I remember it was too warm to be wearing the jacket I had on. I remember thinking “Who is this guy?” I remember him telling me about his book project called 100 Beards. I’m 1% of that book.

I took photos of Jonathan which are not as good as any of the photos he has taken of me. I did my best over the span of the last year and a half. And I think this is about as good as it will get. I wanted to photograph him in the UK, but I haven’t made it there in years, and don’t know when I’ll get around to it again. So here it is.

Thank you for pushing the level of what we do. Thank you for showing me and our peers that there is more to all of this than just the paid promotional “content” traipsing down the street. Thank you for slowing it all down a bit, and for not showing everyone everything all the time. Thank you for teaching me that less is more, that eye contact can be desirable, and that how to muster up the guts to walk up to a total stranger on the street and ask them for a bit of their time.

Thanks, Jonathan.