December 26 - 27, 2021
This particular collection took place the day following Christmas. I once again spent the holidays with my family in Oregon, and we were graced with a blanket of snow which drifted in quietly following Christmas Day. I slept the night of its arrival at my parent's house, lulled back into a state of childhood. As they retired for bed, I wandered the hallways, transitioning between the warmly lit living room decorated with the Christmas tree and occupied by Lucy who slept uneasily on the couch, one-eye cocked open, following me, and the dark corners of back room, whose windows opened out onto the backyard and in the dark gaze of the twisting branches and the soft sheets of snow. The white of this powder dimly illuminated the world as the city lights diffused themselves onto the overcast sky and scattered a dull brown-orange hue. I was once again reminded of "The Forest in Winter at Sunset" by Theodore Rousseau.
At that point and still now, I was plagued with nightmares the frequency of which I hadn't experienced since childhood. I have several theories as to why this occurred and I could perhaps spiral into a long-winded tangent with a few notable examples, but regardless, the resurgence of these dreams stirred in me a desire to express them through photography. I had a larger concept that I was developing, and this particular night made clear a few strange parallel moods.
I felt the warmth and security of living with my parents, and the subsequent feeling of dependency, a surrender of responsibility I had once accepted as a child. As I moved between the small spaces of comfort and the unlit fringes of the house, I remembered the intense fear of my childhood and of my early nightmares and how closely, paradoxically these two states of being stood together.
I sat on the carpet floor and stared vacantly up and out through the window and onto the dark hanging branches that tore through the dull brown expanse of the sky. Within these photographs, I resisted the urge to bring up the exposure and reveal the contents of each scene. It was antithetical to my style of editing, but necessary to articulate the dim snow against the dark corners of the frame, and the strain on one's eyes as they attempted to visually conquer the photograph.
Each photograph is titled after a phrase heard in a dream or perhaps mumbled by a sleeping loved one; a phrase that manages to penetrate the wall of the mind and escape the lips into reality. As the expanding dread in each image increases, the phrases become deep breathes followed by silent screams; meaningless remarks that nevertheless produce terror because what follows them is all the more terrifying.