Tāwhaowhao is connected to driftwood: wood shaped by the ocean, carried by currents, weathered by time, and returned to shore bearing the marks of where it has been.

That image has stayed with me because, in many ways, I understand life through it.

Driftwood does not move in a straight line.

It is carried. Tested. Reshaped.

Sometimes broken.

And yet what survives often holds beauty precisely because it has been weathered.

That means something to me.

I did not choose this name because it sounded unusual or because I wanted a brand that stood apart.

I chose it because I wanted the work I make to come from somewhere real.

Those connections are not ornament to me.

They are inheritance.

They remind me identity is not something we invent from scratch. It is something we uncover, carry, and try to honor.

For a long time, I did not fully understand how much that would shape my creative life.

But over time I began to realize the photographs and films I was most drawn to were never about perfection. They were about presence. About memory. About preserving the feeling of being there.

Those are the moments I care about.

That is what this name asks of me.

Because driftwood carries marks of time. And in a way, so do people. We are shaped by what we pass through. And I believe photographs and films can hold some trace of that shaping.

That is why I am drawn less to spectacle and more to story.

Less to performance and more to what feels real.

Less to polished surfaces and more to the moments underneath.

Because the moments underneath are often the ones that matter most.

When I make photographs, or build a film, I am not simply trying to create something beautiful.

I am trying to preserve something living.

Something a family can return to.

Something that might carry meaning long after this season has passed.

In that sense, this work has never felt separate from my own journey. It feels connected to healing. To legacy. To remembering. To honoring what came before while making something new.

That is what the name holds for me.

Tāwhaowhao is not a label placed on the outside of my work.

It is part of the reason the work exists at all.

A reminder that even what has been carried, weathered, and reshaped can still arrive with purpose.

Like driftwood returned to shore.

Still carrying a story.

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