Some thoughts behind this project.

The idea of creating a photography project has interested me for some time, but I’ve always considered my existing approach to be just that - an ongoing immersion in nature paired with photographic “journal notes” along the way. In other words, I’ve always thought about my work as a project in and of itself.

However, this Summer I found myself making more black and white images that featured abundant contrast and starkness. More often than not, harsh sunlight would beat down on me as I hiked, sweating and cursing mosquitos, ticks and hornets that disrupted my train of thought.

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

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 touch, including ourselves.

Tropics signifies the escalating heat that negatively impacts our planet as the climate deteriorates. Extreme heat also assaults my mental state, motivation, patience, and creativity whenever I head outside with my camera during the height Summer. In a way, this series is about seeking creativity in the face of trudgery and negative emotions.

All of my photographs are meaningful to me on some level, but I’ve named these after certain moods, struggles, and fears I have experienced during the unrelenting, record-breaking heat of what is sure to be the coldest Summer of the rest of our lives.

These photos are not meant to exalt the beauty of the natural world or depict a fantastical, idealized version of nature. Despite their black and white abstraction and somewhat ambiguous subject matter, they are meant to convey a psychological reality as harsh as the atmospheric conditions under which they were conceived.