Brian Molyneaux cannot stop taking photographs of strangers. The compulsion took root in an Oakland Whole Foods in 2016. Molyneaux saw someone standing in the store’s floral department with a box cutter, posed with a gravity akin to the Statue of Liberty, and asked to take his photograph. The next day, Molyneaux took his curiosity further. He came up with a goal: photograph one person on the street, every day, in 24 frames or less—an old habit from his film days when a roll only provided 24 or 36 photos. What started as a half-hearted commitment bloomed into a six-month challenge, then a year-long one and eventually nearly eight years of dedicated portraiture work. Other photographers, he says, called him crazy. To Molyneaux, it was only natural. “Why wouldn’t I want to talk to the public?” he says. “Why wouldn’t I want to connect with people in my world?” NEIGHBORHOOD VISION As part of his one-a-day project, Molyneaux has photographed hundreds of Oaklanders. (Copyright Brian Molyneaux) South Side Born Molyneaux’s world wasn’t always so large. He grew up on Chicago’s South Side, in a stereotypical Chicago South Side way: First-generation Irish, with four siblings in his Irish-Catholic family. He received a Catholic-school education, and his Dad was a cop. “I grew up listening to a lot of Springsteen and identifying with that sort of blue-collar romanticism. And I think I still feel romantic about that,” he says. “But it wasn’t me, because I’m an artist.” Molyneaux describes himself, without judgment, as “the weirdest person” in his family. The feeling took hold in high school when he became acutely aware of the lack of diversity in his school. Though not a far cry from his own white neighborhood, when he tried to question it, Molyneaux found that others didn’t share his concerns, to say the least. “Some kid and I were walking down the hall one day and I said, ‘Hey, have you noticed that there’s not many Black kids here?’ And they said, ‘Oh, yeah, there’s a few, there’s like four,’” Molyneaux recalls. “And this kid also said, ‘Well, the Black kids that are here aren’t really Black … because they’re not from the ’hood.’” Even in an environment where derogatory terms were the norm, the remark curdled in Molyneaux. He asked his parents to transfer schools, a request they granted his junior year, and Molyneaux began to meet people who didn’t fit his South Side mold. Maybe he was forming an artistic eye, his own version of the inherent, singular way in which artists view the world around them. The move definitively marked the beginning of a long, veering path away from Molyneaux’s childhood. He tried, in some ways, to stay on the South Side course—serving as a Teamster in the carpenters and decorators union, an effort he says challenged his very soul. He enrolled in improv classes at Second City and explored acting. Then, in 1996, he moved to Ireland with his girlfriend, tracing his immigrant father’s roots and searching for his own. “I left Chicago because I needed to see something different,” Molyneaux says. “I needed to explore something different about who I am.” His belongings included a Nikon FG camera from his girlfriend’s dad, which Molyneaux played around with, taking mostly photos of landscapes. He dabbled in photography in San Francisco, too, “the promised land” where he and his girlfriend lived for another few years. It wasn’t until the 2000s that his relentless pursuit of new people arose, when he once again began to search diligently for something outside of himself. CONSTANT COMPANION Wherever he goes, Molyneaux brings his camera along to photograph and interview people, like Mickey Yoon of Lovely’s. (Copyright Brian Molyneaux) New York Made One of Molyneaux’s oldest friends from Chicago, Scott Johnston, says Molyneaux was always “more of a drama kid than your stereotypical South Sider.” That escalated when Molyneaux moved to New York City in 2000. There he turned into an artist, spurred on in part by a particular apartment, Johnston says. The apartment was legendary for several reasons. Firstly, it was a stereotypical Brooklyn loft full of artists. Secondly, its former occupant was musician Bob Mould. And lastly, it had a dark room. “Once I landed in Williamsburg,” Molyneaux says, “everything made sense.”  While working a corporate job for Disney Publishing, Molyneaux began carrying his camera everywhere he went. On his daily commute and during his lunch breaks, he took photos of street scenes, dropping the film off at a lab downstairs from his office for processing and later bringing the photos and negatives back up to the light table in Disney’s art department to assess his work. “The goal back in the day was—if you can get one or two out of a roll you really like, then that’s great,” he says. “I started honing editing skills early on.” Molyneaux is largely self-taught, with no formal education in photography. He picked up things here and there, however, like the wisdom to “kill your babies,” from a workshop. His improvisational skills also kicked in, along with his actor’s inclination to observe human nature. Through this experimentation he was learning, he says, what it all meant to him. At MacArthur BART Station. (Copyright Brian Molyneaux) East Bay True Though New York was “immersive” and full of “beautiful, wonderful people,” its luster began to fade after the birth of Molyneaux’s first daughter. Developers bought his beloved loft and started construction, and his new three-floor Prospect Heights walk-up wasn’t exactly child-friendly, either. Molyneaux and his family moved back to California, this time to Oakland, where his one-photograph-a-day project really took hold. “I woke up one day and said, ‘Look, there’s all this diversity around me. There’s all these different people that don’t look like me,’” Molyneaux says. “And I see them all the time and I’m enthralled by it.” Molyneaux has always possessed a willingness and eagerness to engage with those around him. This, Johnston says, has remained true at every stage of Molyneaux’s life. “Going out with him, he was always talking to the girls next to him,” he remembers. “He’s always been that way. He loves to talk to people.” Put more bluntly: “He never shuts up.” I can attest that Midwesterners like myself have an inclination to talk, to chat—long “a” sound—for hours on end. Indeed, my Zoom interview with Molyneaux busted the seams of our allotted schedule. Yet Molyneaux doesn’t talk to fill up space. He’s simply on an endless quest for connection. As he films strangers, Molyneaux asks them deep, personal questions. What is their greatest fear? Who or what brings them joy? Sometimes he puts the camera in their hands, so they can ask him what he asks them. Sometimes his encounters are too brief to get much beyond a few basic details. Nothing deters him, not even his few rejections. He’s been known to practically jump out of cars to capture a shot, a behavior Johnston has witnessed. “The project is also me, and I am also them,” Molyneaux says, referring to his street portraits, though the sentiment applies to much in his life, where he refuses to draw lines or boundaries between people. In 2023, Molyneaux captured 60 portraits in three days for a PSA called “This is What Jewish Looks Like.” He’s not Jewish, obviously. That doesn’t matter. Not for this project, not for any of them. “There is no difference. I mean, there’s differences in skin color and there’s differences in religions and backgrounds and things like that,” he says. “But in the end, at the core, we’re all the same, and I like to celebrate that.” On Telegraph Ave. (Copyright Brian Molyneaux)