Author name: Dante Sisofo

What’s poppin’, people? It’s Dante.

Currently in the woods here on this beautiful Monday, just photographing with the Ricoh GR IIIX.

Thinking today about goals — you know, setting goals in 2026.

I think the goals that we set should be internal, not necessarily seeking an external goal, but thinking more critically about how we can cultivate curiosity.

Wow, look at these geese flying by.
I’m about to get this photo.
Crop mode. 71 millimeters.
The geese.

Oh yeah.
Oh yeah — look at those geese, baby.

And so yeah, this is what it’s all about, right?
Waking up in the morning with enthusiasm for the day.

When you look at the word enthusiasm, it basically means to be possessed by God.
I want to wake up possessed by God each day — simply curious and grateful for another day.

I use photography this way:
as me saying yes to life,
affirming life,
and just saying thank you for the day.

My ultimate aim — my ultimate goal of 2026 — is to increase my curiosity by 1% each day.

By cultivating curiosity, it feels like there’s just endless possibility.

Detached from the outcome of making something “strong.”
Detached from the outcome of seeking fame, money, or any sort of reputation with photography.

Instead, really honing in on that internal goal of curiosity —
and waking up eager for the day.

That’s my simple way forward with this approach to everyday life and photography.

The goal is curiosity.

So for the past three years, I’ve been leaning towards abstraction in my Street photography.

I currently live in Philadelphia, my hometown, and I’m blessed to have a big city with lots of people and things to photograph. However, there’s not necessarily interesting moments or scenes to photograph most of the time. It’s a very mundane, every day, city.

And so because of that, the solution to this problem became abstraction for me.

I simply use abstraction as away for me to remain curious. Away for me to photograph the mundane, but still find new ways to articulate things.

And so I think abstraction is a great solution to this problem of the Monday nature of life in Street photography.

And so abstraction becomes something that I can carry with me wherever I may be, no matter if I’m in a bustling marker city, or on the outskirts in a forest.

I use abstraction, not only as a way for me to create a new world and evoke an emotional quality or a mood within the frames, because of course this is my interest, but in a very fundamental practical level, it is a solution to the problem being, how to walk the same mundane lane every single day, but still find something new to photograph, something new to say…