The long version of a short job

Gabriel asked for photographs of a finished mural. What he got, after eight months, was the process: the wall before, the scaffolding, the hands, the failures painted over at midnight.

Rules for a documentary series

1. Be there more often than you shoot. Most days the camera stayed in the bag.
2. One body, one lens. Changing glass in front of somebody working breaks the thing you came to photograph.
3. Show the work-in-progress frames to the subject. Trust is the equipment that matters on a job like this.

What the series shows

A mural is not made in the order you would guess. The area a passer-by reads as the subject was painted third, over two days, after a week of laying flat color nobody will ever consciously see.

The photograph everybody chooses is the one of his hands, out of focus, holding a can. It is technically the worst frame in the set.

Delivered as a 96-page book and a 40-frame exhibition edit.