These are images of my breath. To make them I exhale onto photosensitive paper. I cannot wholly predict or control these images. They are made outside in open air, and variables such as temperature, quality of light, wind, and differences in how I breathe affect each.
Breathing demonstrates that our edges are diffuse and shifting. I use photographic processes to dwell on this: we cannot draw a sharp line between ourselves and the rest of the world. I am taken by photography’s ability to winnow things down toward the heart of a given process or idea, in this case, the fact that I am alive.
The last of these images is not of my breath, but of a smooth stone silhouetted behind translucent opal glass. The stone is from a beach on Lake Huron where as a child I decided that I hated paved surfaces.
