Land, Marked.

(2022-2025)

Originally from the Carolinas, I’ve spent the last five years working throughout the American West. As I worked as a trail guide, mule packer, and ranch hand, I found that the arid landscapes of the West offered a fascinating display of overlapping histories—cultural, geological, and ecological. The living topographies that surrounded me were actively being carved by water and wind, long ago sculpted by glaciers, and further preceded by ancient seas whose fossils still rest amongst the creek beds. The land told the stories of the indigenous peoples that steward it and the bison that once freely roamed its expanses. Today, global warming, fence lines, highways, and grazing continue to define and reshape these geographies. Each influence, past and present, seems to reverberate throughout the landscape, culminating into its present ever-evolving form.  This photo series looks at how memory is embodied in the landscape. Each photograph presents a vignette that is determinedly not isolated, but instead a vestige of the interwoven narratives that define our surroundings.

A photograph from trail crew in the Grand Canyon