“I’m not a materialist or a deist or anything else. I’m a man who one day opened the window and discovered this crucial thing: Nature exists. I saw that the trees, the rivers and the stones are things that truly exist…”
-Alberto Caeiro (Fernando Pessoa), 1914
These 4x5 film photographs were made over the course of several years all over the U.S. and
Canada, and developed with the help of many artist residencies, individual artists and strangers I met in my travels. All of these images were created using in-camera exposures, meaning everything was done within the camera and nothing was altered or combined using the help of computers or any kind of post-process. This is an important part of my work, as it helps me to develop a deeper connection to the landscape and it forces me to work in tandem with my manual camera to capture the raw impression of a place. During the 3 years I created this series I visited some of the most isolated areas of North America, which was an exciting and sometimes dangerous experience, though I am grateful for every part of it.
These photos were made during a time when I was traveling and exploring the relationship
between the natural and human-made landscapes, trying to find both the coalescence and
conflict that is inherent therein. Though each image is part of a larger series, I wanted each of them to contain their own story as well, which is both independent yet connected to the larger whole. This is similar to the way I see our human relationship being connected to nature, tacitly but from a mental and physical distance.
Literature is a big part of my creative process, as it helps me to create visual narratives that are more relatable to our human experience. It is a great challenge to create ecocentric work that we as humans can connect with, as you may notice that there are no humans present in any of my works. Many of the ideas for my photographic work stem from publications within the movements of Magical Realism and Surrealism, though I now think of my images more like what Cuban author Alejo Carpentier referred to as Lo Real Maravilloso, or the ‘Marvelous Real’. Lo Real Maravilloso is something that is rooted in the commonplace and typical, but simultaneously unusual and bizarre. In the years I spent traveling to create this body of work I have witnessed and experienced things that are simultaneously ordinary, unusual and even border on the supernatural. I want to emphasize that literature has not encouraged me to explore an imagined world, it instead has helped me to explore the idea that there are other layers within or alongside our own.
As I create both exposures in-camera, there’s a chaotic element to what I create. I can guide
various elements together as a composer in tandem with my camera, but there are always
unpredictable phenomena. As this series evolved I began to think of this as a sort of cooperation with the environments I photograph. It took a patient and intentional interaction with the land even before I set up my camera, and occasionally I would opt to never hit the shutter, leaving that image and impression existing only in my head.
There are people who find solace in the profound silence of vast and open spaces, but there are many for which nature is merely an abstraction, something they struggle to relate to. My goal as an artist is to help facilitate a deeper, personal connection to wildlife for you, the viewer. I desire to capture not only the visual experience of seeing these places firsthand, but the emotional impact as well. These fragile, tenuous worlds are real places that I have seen, and places that my camera captured. They exist in our world and alongside us, and what that means for the present and future is up to you as an individual to consider.
