03/04/2026
I spent a lot of time in my teenage years running through fields, forests, and long stretches of open road. Self-portraiture became a way for me to be fully present with myself. Completely alone, completely focused.
Growing up, I resented living in Ohio. I thought it was boring. The winters felt gray and lifeless, and I struggled to see any beauty in the landscape around me. What I didn’t realize then, was that growing up there forced me to search for creativity. It pushed me to look harder, to find beauty in simplicity- as cheesy as it sounds.
When I finally moved away, a thought I never expected slowly crept in: did I actually miss the Midwest?
I missed the sound of birds in the early morning. The heaviness in the air before it rained. Feeling the dew from the grass as my feet touched the earth.
I missed the stillness, the simplicity, the solitude. My heart ached for authenticity and comfort. The feeling of driving miles down an empty road with no one else in sight, of standing alone in an open field and letting the quiet settle in. It caught me off guard, and at first, I didn’t want to admit it to anyone, let alone myself.
But the truth is, both Ohio and Kentucky have shaped my photography since the very beginning- since I first picked up a camera when I was barely twelve.
The landscapes, the silence, the understated beauty have been woven into my work from the start. It was in those quiet, in-between spaces that I began to understand who I was.
Here I stand today, with my ten-year-old lens, tweleve-year-old camera body, thirteen-year-old tripod, and twenty-seven-year-old self. What once began as an escape has become a quiet constant. Maybe the solitude is exactly what I needed.
