“Portrait of Nick Charney Kaye”

Photograph

April 20, 2013. Thirty years old, and dressed like it’s an occasion — because it is.

Three-piece grey suit, patterned tie, pocket square, wayfarers indoors, hands in pockets, weight on the back foot. The backdrop runs a studio gradient from violet to teal, and the subject stands off-center right, giving the empty left half of the frame to whatever comes next. It’s a birthday portrait composed like a product shot, which is the joke, and also not a joke at all.

The moment

For the record of where thirty landed: Wendr — the social app he co-founded, the SXSW billboard, the startup-competition wins — was weeks from its farewell letter. A decade of New York film and agency work was behind him; the patent, the studio, and everything this portfolio’s later years hold hadn’t happened yet. This is the face of a man between chapters who has decided to feel good anyway.

Feeling good on my 30th birthday — the entire original caption, preserved here as the complete artist’s statement.

The manifesto closes with we are sincere, and a birthday portrait is sincerity’s easiest test: no client, no brief, no audience but the future. Suit up for it anyway. Look directly at the lens. Proceed into the decade.