first last light.

first last light ruminates on how the earth holds time, keeping a record of its own histories through fossils, waterways, soil, and the shifting atmospheric qualities of a place. I began photographing this series during the quiet moments I sought throughout the pandemic, thinking about how fragile and porous our bodies are, embedded in the environment and built places. This work threads dreams and myths, the drama of living, the unpredictability of the weather, data collection, detritus left in public parks, and the life cycles of plants, rocks and animals.

Traditional landscape photography frames nature as an aesthetic resource, with looking and possessing closely entwined. Instead, these works consider the reciprocity of attuning to place and the influences that pervade the living world. Through my work in Full Circle’s color darkroom and informed by the research of friend and collaborator Alica Puglionesi, the hues, light and qualities of color in these images also began to tell a story. This work for me is about redefining relationships with nature, land and people and questioning habitual ways of knowing and perception.

The text by Alicia Puglionesi that accompanies these images is repurposed from William and Elizabeth Denton’s The Soul of Things (1863; 1874), and reflects on the Dentons’ purported mediumistic ability to read the past inscribed within materials.