Narcissus drowned in a pool that became a mirror.
He fell in love with his reflection in the pool and fell toward it, attempting to meet it.
Had Narcissus gazed at his reflection in a river, he would have seen a silhouette
cut through by the current – his features illegible in the unsettled surface.
He might not then have fallen into the water and drowned.
He might have lived had he not known his own face.
The pool: a body of water in the shape of an ego.

Woolf walked into the River Ouse with stones in her pockets. Full pockets. Riverstones dense
in their beauty and smoothness. I wonder if she felt the stones in her hands, felt both
surfaces speak to one another, skin touched and stone held. I wonder if
this gave her pause on the shore, held her attention. I imagine her
enveloped in the act of holding a stone, living a moment longer.
This is beautiful but beauty alone will not save anyone.
It is without an ethics. It must be swallowed whole.
This is about attention.
Hold the smooth dark stone tight in your fist until it softens from pressure and heat.
It was formed this way in the first place. Acts of attention soften our felt edges.

Heat River is a study of a rivermouth emptying into Lake Superior in a remote part of Michigan. These photographs were made within feet of one another on the banks of the rivermouth over the course of July and August 2021, and August 2022. Over those months the shape of the riverbanks, the quality of light, and the character of the water often shifted to such a degree that the rivermouth was rendered unfamiliar. I often had to reassess the subject of my photographs as though I had never seen the mouth before. With this in mind I aim to convey the sheer particularity of the rivermouth – the mouth in excess of a stable identity.

These images are long-exposure photographs; most are exposures of four to eight minutes. They were made at the tail-end of dusk. Dim light is brightened beyond what eyes alone can see. Because of this, the time of day often appears ambiguous. In many of these images the light is hazy and muted. This is from the smoke of forest fires in Ontario thickening the air over Lake Superior.

2021–ongoing