In school we were taught to make the perfect exposure and print. We weren’t allowed to use flash. We couldn’t even title our images; the work had to stand completely on its own. Subject matter? We were being schooled for National Geographic and the Topeka Capital Journal. It’s taken me years to jettison those constraints from my work, that narrow view of what a photograph is supposed to be, rather than the expansive view of what a photograph can be.
I like these images because they are completely unromanticized. They’re not abstracted. They are what they are: color and line and shape and texture and tone and light and shadow. I began this series in late summer of 2017. I became compulsive and obsessive about shooting images like these. I thought I’d shoot a few more, then move on, but I continued shooting into the winter (and I continue to shoot them to this day.) The first thing I noticed was that, while New England is known for its brilliant fall colors, the woods also turn very silvery. And after much contemplation, I finally came to the conclusion that this project was my attempt to find beauty and order in chaos, which is what I’m seeing in the world right now.
