Here are four pictures I took the last time I was in Maryland - the last one of the sunset through the trees is in my sister’s backyard in Richmond. I’m back in Maryland again tonight. I have had a hell of a week, and am in an all-too-familiar pattern of waiting for the days to seem less long, and for my sadness to seem less pressing. So I’m comforting myself with these pictures of trees. Below is a short blurb I wrote on what being depressed has meant for my work, at the request of someone putting together a project based on the experience of making photographs while depressed.

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In my statement I name memory, loss, and uncertainty as the main motivation behind my work. These are all byproducts of my depression. When I started working on this project, I was fresh out of college and lacked direction, without feedback. I kept photographing, though, and two years later I’ve noticed that when I’m not making pictures, it’s very hard to see past my own sadness. I photograph, and live, in spite of my depression.  
I am surrounded by change and feel like my life has been constantly in flux since this project started. The uncertainty comes from the fact that the places I return to, to make pictures, change interminably each time I return. I have a mild fixation on documenting things as they are in a given moment, in order to not lose those pieces of myself. This can be said about my portraits too- my nephew keeps getting bigger, my mother keeps getting frailer, every time I see them. The actual subjects are the feelings I had at these places, with these people, and since the feelings are in the past, I’ve found they can only be revisited through my photographs. The images are less documentarian, however, than they are manifestations of a past long gone, before the things I photograph are changed or gone forever. 

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I’m going to get off my ass and drive around and make some pictures.