Day: December 29, 2019

What Remains – Is a photo essay on the elegance of transformation, death, dying and decay in the natural world. These subjects are often taboo in our western cultures. We have a fascination with living and life to the point of not seeing death and the process of dying as part of it.

My intention with the composition of these images is to show the beauty, elegance and giving the subjects an aesthetic resonance. I want the audience to spend time looking deeper at the beauty of it. I don’t want the to tone to be morbid. I’m looking to invoke the curious and the perhaps the inner story teller to be invited to explore. Giving the subjects a memoir that is everyone’s story

These images are taken from my travels across the country in over the last two years. They represent the diverse ways that nature is transparent, honest and transforming in its process of moving from one state of existence to another. This set of images also has the remnants of life. These are the shells and nests that speak to the safe place where life is lived and nurtured. Now they are empty left to the weather and time to also become the stuff of new life

Life and death are part of the great journey we all take on this planet How something dies and is slowly repurposed into new life is one of the great mysteries we need to be paying attention to.

All these photos are original works and are available for purchase.

” Red sky at night sailor’s delight,

Red sky at dawn sailors are warned….”

Unknown

I grew up a long the shoreline in Connecticut. The beach was down the street. There were shells to be found. Horseshoe crabs to save between the tides. Blue fish to catch. Bright sun for that native tan. Disorienting foggy days and storms.

Once in the mid seventies New Haven harbor froze. A rare event. The ice was thick enough to walk. It was amazing to see a solid ocean with out waves. The wind blew with out the constant rhythm of the tides. I imagined that is what the Artic sounded like.

Living near the ocean I was a constantly reminded the everything could change in an instant. The ocean has a complex full set of conditions and seemingly endless emotional states that ran from one end to the other. The ocean was not shy about expression. She feels full and raw everything. She hides nothing. The ocean embodies the Goddess. She and her 10,000 names uttered from every shore line. She gives everything and takes everything. Life starts with her and she will be the resting place for what is left to start again.

The sky and the ocean are a team. What separates them is a thin undulating line of molecules. This is where particles exchange. Like a cell wall and osmosis, the sky and ocean are perpetually sharing information, nutrients, and particles. One could say the oceans and the sky are lovers constantly in entangled, emeshed, expressions of passion and indifferent stillness. The sky’s vastness is uncontained, reflexed and controlled by the moisture and warmth from the ocean’s constant ferment.

The Sun will heat the surface of the water and the sky will recieve the ocean’s droplets and amass huge storms of winds, lightning and rain. Traversing miles and miles at the whim of ocean currents. An atmospheric tango. With the land masses acting as the tables in a crowded night club as these two impassioned dancers maneuver between.

Some mornings when the droplets hang just right in the sky and the sun rises at a certain angle. The sky turns red. Over time we have learned that this means a storm is coming. And sailors didn’t sail and people waited it out.