A BODY OF PHOTOGRAPHS SHOT ON 35MM FILM, 8x10 FILM, POLAROID, AND DIGITAL.

SHOT FROM NOVEMBER 2020 – MAY 2023

Dedicated to Ava Augusta Hingson

I have thought extensively about including a written component with this body of work, both when preparing to exhibit it in a show and when publishing it on my website. I initially chose not to include any text other than a small benediction at the end of the gallery that read:

No matter how ferocious,

may this life always be

something with possibility,

something worth loving.

I have since changed in my thinking about offering context, because I think it allows for a more intimate engagement with this work and because I love to tell people about Ava and who she was. For those who did not know Ava, she was a daughter, friend, equestrian, artist, and student. She loved sunsets and befriending strangers and she dreaded inauthenticity. She was imaginative, unbounded, irreverent, witty, honest, and, to this day, the kindest person I have ever met. She taught me to befriend joy and to give love as much as possible in this lifetime, even and especially when it does not make sense. When we were both 19, on November 17th, 2020, she died in a sudden equestrian accident on our college campus.

I originally wanted to avoid over-explanation, considering the first place I ever showed this work was Sewanee, my alma mater, which is also where Ava had lived and died and where many of these photographs were shot. I felt that if I explained too much about this work up front, I would be imposing on the experiences and memories others may bring to it. And while this work is fundamentally about the life and loss of Ava, it is also about the broader, intertwined experiences of grief and love. But I now feel certain that this context is important, and that it allows this work to reach others in a more intimate way.

As I understand it now, this work is a meditation on what it is to integrate grief into the rest of a life: what it is to look into the eyes of your loved ones again after a traumatic loss, to stumble through the ruins and the rebuilding of a shattered worldview, to feel someone you’ve lost all around you while their absence still haunts you — what it is to be utterly heartbroken and to still, somehow, find yourself filled with wonder at the world turning around you.

I invite you to bring all of yourself to these photographs.

To access the virtual gallery show, click here.