Winter 2026 has been rough. I’ve been drowning at work and I’m beginning to understand why the stats on autistic employment are so bad. I have no idea what is expected of me or how I fit into the machinery of my workplace. This is felt as an existential threat, as I’m very aware that an openly queer, public library, librarian in the rural American south during Trump’s second term is about as precarious a position as I can be in. Add to this the fact that the police state has been told to consider someone like me a terrorist and threat to national security, thereby eroding any right to privacy I may have nominally had prior. Then throw in a nice little dose of open bigotry from the main office of my primary care doctor’s office and the fact that my doctor is fully disregarding what I tell her about my medical history. Generally, I think I’m doing pretty well only having one meltdown a week.
I bring all of that up because of how this shows up in my photography. If I were a photojournalist or worked in a different medium/with different subject matter, I feel like I would be in a better position to express the turmoil, fear, and overwhelm I’m feeling everyday. But I’m a nature photographer, and that is the language I know to use for this purpose. The main things I’ve come to see in my work are the ways in which I’m processing grief. Most of my forest photography has been focused on processing the grief of the various lives I was denied and can never have. My recent work has been focused more on this ambient doom that seems like it exists just around the next corner. The fact that it isn’t there, just makes that sense stronger rather than dispelling the fear.
The broken lines, the signs of violence and destruction, the overwhelming volume of individual features becoming its own distinct kind of form. All of those are the tools I’m using here to process the fear and grief of this moment. The images might not be pretty, they might not be as pointed and precise as you’d find in other mediums, but they are reflections of my now. I hope I live long enough to see myself do work that feels positive or uplifting. Right now that kind of work isn’t possible.
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