Brief Lives is a body of photographs which ask to what extent a place can be abstracted into ephemeral characteristics. The images show the environment outside the house where I live, primarily a field bounded by the Connecticut River in southeastern Vermont. This region was core to the development of the tropes and ideology of American landscape art. With this history in mind, I take novel approaches to representing this place.
I grant sustained attention, sometimes over the course of years, to small and recurring objects and processes in and around my living space. There are lumen images of my breath, the quality of light bracketed as a subject in-itself, the thinnest sides of flower petals, obscura images of my windows and doors, deep ruts in the field, and the swallows that migrate and nest here. This place has become a frame for me to watch things come in and out of existence.
