Beginning in a cedar forest in San Miguel, Portugal, I became intrigued by the possibility of surfaces, both natural and photographic, to act as permanent records of temporary states.
Seeing a wall of mud here, where the dense growth had been clear cut to limit the size of the trees’ roots, and in turn maintain the stability of the hill as a whole I understood it as a natural pause - a moment in between two states, of growth and destruction, where both could be seen on the same plane.
In tandem with photographing this forest, I began hand making C-prints of images from other instances where I observed this same stoppage. Black and white negatives act as framework, as permanent anchors on the emulsion, for blue colored light to settle into. Blue is water, the energy of cyclical change in nature, this entity that can exist in many states. Blue highlights the image, inducing it into an alternate reality, a network composed of these pauses/ moments of transcendence.
Our direct experience of things that are in states of change are shaped by seeing moments of pause within them, and anticipating what is happening before and after, scaling them infinitely in time and space.
