A little water has passed under the bridge since those last images from Montana: a pandemic, many pictures made for specific purposes, a lot of video exploring time and place, and a whole lot of work for work’s sake. There are strange congruences between the landscapes of Montana’s Front Range and the Scottish Highlands: vast, complex open spaces shaped by land and water, textured mountains and fields, and active skies that paint everything with light, shadow, and rain. Scotland was probably the place I needed to see when I was ready to see it.
These images are works in progress — a throwaway line, I know — but with all that water under the proverbial bridge came a lot of looking, seeing, and learning. Ansel Adams’s idea of the image as a structured score to be explored and articulated makes more sense than ever. The COVID years hammered home the ephemeral nature of our lives, contrasted against the strength and continuity of the human experiences of those who made these difficult places home. It’s impossible to see either Scotland or Montana without sensing the depth of history and the stories of the generations who lived there; many of those families left the western isles for places like Montana and Maine (where I once lived).
There are also conversations to be had about the sublime and about empathy — I’m not ready to untangle that yet.
In the meantime, see what you think of these so far.
