Provincetown is my home. It is comfort food and my favorite reading chair. It is the smell of a newborn’s hair or that moment when you first wake up in the morning snuggled against your lover. It is the place that offers me the intangibles: security and happiness, as well as a place for discovery, development, and ultimately a source of inspiration. I have spent endless summers in Provincetown but it is not where I reside. It is the home I return to, physically or emotionally, when I need a fix.

Last year, I completed a six-year project of self-portraits (I Feel Lucky) in which many of the images were shot in Provincetown. As an aquaphile, shooting in water was inevitable for me and some of the pieces express my joyful and layered response to Provincetown—this place that had become my sanctuary as I processed the loss of many friends to HIV/AIDS.




In untitled (Fountain), my face is unmasked as I glance at the camera and spit a fountain of salt water. Fully exposed to the summery sunshine and brilliant blue water, I seize the spirit of Provincetown and stake out my future in this land that holds my past.

Frank Yamrus is represented by ClampArt, Catherine Couturier Gallery, and Albert Merola Gallery. I Feel Lucky (2012), with essays by W.M. Hunt and Sunil Gupta, is available from the galleries or on Frank’s website; 72 pages, 11 x 11 inches softcover; also limited edition book with five-by-seven inch print. Four photographs from his “Motion Series” are included in “Making Waves,” on view through August 2 at Daniel Cooney Fine Art.