THE WEIGHT OF A HILL || My submission to the @phmuseum 2022 Photography Grant 🕊🪲🦋 I’m currently working on a book called, The Weight of a Hill, that will serve as a photographic record of the past seven years since overcoming manic and depressive periods. It is powerful and cathartic to be immersed in this work. It’s a project I have had to step away from at times but always find myself called back to continue. This series of portraits and landscapes is an interpretation of the human condition, of our collective strength and resilience as a species. My hope is that by articulating some of those raw experiences through the use of imagery and text, the book might leave those who come across it feeling less stranded, or at the very least, more at ease in their own world. I want to exude my own light and sincerity outward - a reflection of what was offered to me when I needed it dearly. It will serve as an ode to each person that has held me and wrapped me in their warmth. It’s an acknowledgment of beauty, of noticing beauty and holding it close. It has taken me a long while to recognize the strength there is to be found in vulnerability. The Weight of a Hill is a slow moving observation on love for the self. My work exists at the intersection of things real and imagined - expansive, glimmering, tender. There is a very particular kind of tenderness that I want people to feel. The intention behind a lot of the photographs I make is to grant the observer permission to come to a halt, to let in a feeling and let that fill you up for a while. If this project does one thing, for even just one person - I want it to serve as a reminder that we can always come back to a feeling of ease, a feeling of home within our bodies.