Fallen Pine Boughs

12x15 in. archival pigment prints, 2019

In the Spring of 2016, I went on a long solo hike in the Bighorn Mountains of Wyoming. I hiked for four hours without seeing another person, mostly trudging over snow and ice that hadn’t melted from the recent winter. Scattered all over the ground were thousands of pine boughs that had fallen from the trees. Each one was unique in shape and form, some large and full of cones, and others small, twisted and bent. There is an anthropomorphic quality to the pine boughs. In their infinite differences, I see a simile of our own uniqueness and the connections we have with the systems of our natural world.

This collection of simple still life photographs marks my passage through time and space as well as my impulse to collect and revere the overlooked and unobserved. For me, there is also an underlying sense of loss and melancholy that emanates from these photographs. With rising temperatures, the mountain pine beetle, is thriving and expanding its territory, decimating millions of acres of forests across the American West. Like the bleaching of the coral reefs, disappearance of glaciers, and mass die-off of species, the pine boughs represent a lost and fading world.