morbid (2022) (Patreon)

There are a lot of reasons I shoot photos, but one of those has weighed heavier on my mind than most recently. I want time to stop—just for a little while—so I can reminisce without the weight of the future tinging my memories of the past. A photograph is the best way to give myself a pause, an unobstructed reminiscence. I want to have all these idyllic snapshots of times that will never return because I need to hold onto something stronger than memory as the years get worse. 

Maybe they won't get worse, I tell myself. I can repeat it like a mantra, but I can't feel it in my bones; all that remains at my core is the persistent anxiety deep within that last year, or two years ago, or three years ago, was truly the best it would ever get. 

Perhaps it is at the forefront of my mind because of the unrelenting heat, or the choking, constant fire smoke, or the burning forests that threaten to engulf my house in rural Idaho every year. Maybe it's the frightening political climate and the unmitigated, constant hatred. Perhaps it's as simple as that I can finally see 30 on the horizon and aging—and the uninterrupted flow of time—seems more tangible than ever. I'm not sure.

All I know is that you can only make the apocalypse and the burned and the dead and the decayed your main themes for so long before you wish there was some life in the viewfinder.