8/11/23

Some thoughts behind this project.

The idea of creating a photography project has appealed to me for a while, but I’ve always considered my existing approach to be just that - an ongoing immersion in nature paired with photos along the way (like journal notes in image form). I’ve always thought about my work as a never-ending project in and of itself, each photograph punctuating my story with nature.

However, this Summer I found myself making more black and white images that featured abundant contrast and starkness. Most often, harsh sunlight would beat down on me as I hiked sweating and cursing mosquitos, ticks and hornets that disrupted my train of thought. A different emotional undercurrent found its way to the surface that steered my creativity in a whole new direction.

Frustration and physical discomfort factor into my photography each Summer, but I’ve steered away from conveying negative feelings in my images. Finally, the bright highlights and deep shadows that comprise most every scene on the hottest days for once helped me to compose photographs I would not have considered just a year ago.

In a way, this series is about seeking creativity in the face of toil and negative emotions. Balance and calm have little to do with it.

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The name of this series is a combination of entropy and tropics. Entropy is the natural force we have to thank for things like decay, dispersion, chaos. It is the breaking down, the destruction of all things, and bringer of chaos. Bleak as it sounds, it is the natural, physical fate of all we can see and touch.

Tropics signifies the escalating heat that negatively impacts our planet as the climate deteriorates. Extreme heat likewise assaults my motivation, patience, and creativity whenever I head outside with my camera during the height Summer.

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These photos are not meant to exalt the beauty of the natural world or depict a fantastical, idealized version of nature. Sometimes, nature can just suck, but we have to accept the bad in order to appreciate the good. Despite their black and white abstraction and somewhat ambiguous subject matter, they are meant to convey a psychological reality as harsh and oppressive as the atmospheric conditions under which they were conceived.