Amir Zaki

When asked to write about just one image, I panic. I freeze. I am horrible at taking personality tests because, inevitably, I can’t decide what kind of person I am. I love photographs. I love the relationships between photographs. I love nostalgia and beauty as much as I love brutal reality. I am writing this text before I force myself to choose an image to accompany it. I’ll bite my nails over the decision. I’ll procrastinate. I resist the ‘singular’ in nearly everything that matters. The singular idea. The singular image. The singular text. Singularity is convenient but artificial. For every body of work I make, I am asked by someone at some point, ‘Which image is your favorite?’ I am a petrified forest. In choosing an image for this project, should I be ironic? Too easy. Should I be earnest? Too cheesy..…I took a break to eat some lunch. I looked through my dining room, outside at a maturing avocado tree that I planted as a baby several years ago. There are probably over a hundred tiny avocados on it right now that can’t be seen in this rather ‘bad’ photograph. There is nothing singular about that single tree.