Miya Tsudome

Heidi: The photograph of Laura Pineau on Wet Lycra Nightmare ultimately became the cover of Gripped. When you were hanging there watching Laura move through the crux, did you sense that the moment had the potential to become a defining image?
Miya: Initially I was up there to film Laura climbing Wet Lycra Nightmare so when she actually sent the crux, she was climbing in the shade and I was filming it. Higher up on the wall, I was waiting to shoot another pitch and I watched this sliver of light hit the wall, with the valley still mostly shaded in the back, and I knew I wanted to go shoot the crux in that light. So when Laura sent the route I convinced her to stay another night on Ahwahnee Ledge with me so we could get photos of the crux pitch. I knew that it would be an impactful image – it’s not every day you get to watch history being made in rock climbing with a female first ascent of a notoriously difficult route. We both were committed to bringing that photo to life, knowing it would be an important one.

When a woman photographs another woman in a space like Yosemite — a place with such a long photographic legacy — do you think the image carries a different kind of narrative weight?
I think it does carry a different kind of narrative weight. I love the camaraderie that comes along with women shooting women, which is something we experience together on the wall. But also creating photos together that will go down in Yosemite history feels meaningful. There are so many incredibly strong women in the sport, absolutely dominating big wall free climbing. And I feel like it’s significant when women are behind the lens as well to capture it.

Because you’re also a climber, you’re not just observing the moment — you’re  part of the system on the wall. How does that embodied perspective change the way you compose an image or anticipate a moment for your work on the Free Wall Kit and your Gripped cover?
Being a climber who is familiar with big wall environments has become a huge advantage in what and how I shoot. One of my biggest concerns is always how to move around athletes in the least impactful way possible, and knowing how to adapt quickly to different scenarios. Whether that’s climbing ahead myself, or fixing lines, sleeping on the wall, or rappelling in; it is a constantly shifting environment and each assignment demands different tactics. And a lot of the time I’m shooting things in real time as they happen, like shooting Doerte Pietron and Daniel Gebel for the Freewall Kit in Madagascar as they attempted to send King Line, 8a+ (5.13c/d), which means I don’t always have the luxury of composing and recreating a shot like I did with Laura. So I have to rely on my instincts as a climber and photographer to capture what I can the best I can.

Patagonia’s The Freewall Kit was designed around the realities of long days on the wall. How do those design details change the experience of working as a photographer in that environment?
The Freewall Kit was designed for big wall free climbers, which has become the new frontier of modern rock climbing. But photographers and filmmakers are doing just as much work, jugging like crazy up fixed lines, hauling, managing ropes, only to sit for hours shooting. So a kit that emphasizes durable, flexible layers like the Freewall Kit for when you’re moving but also for when you’re resting is also a big wall photographer’s dream. We have to prepare to shoot in any conditions that the athlete wants to climb in, and taking care of yourself up on a wall is really important. And a huge part of that is having the right layers. You never want to be the reason why something can’t happen.

You spent time working with photographer Corey Rich and his production company Novus Select. What did that experience teach you about the craft and logistics of adventure photography and filmmaking? 
Interning under Corey Rich was a huge stepping stone in my career. At that point I knew how to use a camera, but knew next to nothing about the broader world of photo and video production. I was able to take part in such a variety of shoots, and absorb what it takes to be the best at your craft as well as run a production business. I think mentorship in this career path is essential. And there’s no easy, straightforward path to finding the right mentors. I’ve been lucky to have people like Corey as well as Ben Ditto to get me on jobs and give me advice. Corey also introduced me to Sarah Steele who helped to found an all-female production company called Well Travelled which has grown my network of female creatives to look up to.

Your work often sits at the intersection of athletics and storytelling — you’re a strong climber yourself, but also documenting the moment. How has developing your own climbing ability influenced the kinds of images and films you’re able to make?
Developing my own climbing has definitely helped with what types of images and films I’m able to create. I used to be a guide for the Yosemite Mountaineering School, and those skills also have come into play a lot when I’m out shooting. Not only do you have to be fit enough to keep up with athletes, but you have to have a keen awareness of how to adapt to different climbing environments. Being someone who is really dedicated to my personal climbing allows me to know I have more wiggle room in planning logistics of a shoot. Because sometimes the easiest way to shoot is by climbing ahead of a team yourself.

You started in Yosemite with a one-way ticket, a service job, and a life built around climbing. Now you’re photographing historic ascents and landing magazine covers. When you look back at that version of yourself arriving in the Valley, what would surprise her most about where you are now?
I was just talking about this to a friend the other day. What would me 10 years ago think about me now?? We take so much for granted in our present realities. And I’m guilty of falling into the trap of “not good enough, have to work harder, have to do better,” that it’s good to remind myself that the me 10 years ago, who was bussing tables in the Ahwahnee dining room and climbing 5.8 would be utterly in awe of who I am now. I think she would feel amazed that she gets to work regularly with a brand like Patagonia, and gets to shoot all around the world for her job. It’s a good reminder. Always look back to see how far you’ve come. And always strive for more.

What are you working on now (photographically and personal climbing objectives)?
Right now I’m coming off a wonderfully simple winter of being at home in Bishop, California, working on some local photo and video jobs and putting time in out at the boulders to build up my strength base for the year. I’ve got some exciting international work trips planned this summer, and am going to the valley in the spring to try to tick off some personal climbing goals and get back into route climbing and multipitch shape. It’s a constant management of expectations trying to balance my personal climbing and my job, but I love both so much and am so grateful to be able to do what I do.

Tracy L Chandler

Heidi: You talk about the desert as a ‘silent character’. How do you think it’s harshness and beauty influenced the emotional language of the images, beyond simply being your physical past?
Tracy: The desert is both a container and a character in this work. I grew up there. I breathed that air, I was shaped by that light. It’s in me.
What makes the desert so particular as a photographic subject is the way it refuses neutrality. The light alone can shift from oppressive to tender within a couple of hours. At high noon it obliterates everything. It’s so vast and so harsh that it becomes almost claustrophobic, which I know sounds contradictory, but there’s something about that relentless, unforgiving openness that offers no refuge, no shade, no place to hide. You can’t escape it. That sense of being exposed and trapped at the same time, that was the emotional texture of growing up there. But then at the edges of the day, that soft pastel window at dusk, the desert can feel like the most gentle thing. And then at night it gets strange. There’s this deep black with nothing in the distance to emit or reflect light. Everything just falls into the absolute unknown. I think that swing between beauty and threat is the same emotional range I was navigating as a kid. The desert didn’t just inform the pictures’ content and aesthetics. It became the psychological language of the work.

How do you wrestle with time’s passage and nature’s relentlessness in shaping how we feel and remember? Here I was thinking about time as a photographic element and how you created portals for us to explore….or simply put, how do you approach photographing time?
Time in the desert is genuinely strange. The natural environment is so prehistoric and durable. Any trace of humanity just accumulates dust and holds its shape for decades. So when I’d return to a site from my adolescence, the architecture or object often hadn’t changed. But I had. Time had changed me. And now my memory of those places wasn’t the same as what I was looking at. So what you get is this uncanny collision where the present physical reality clashes with the ghost of your past experience of it. And then to photograph it morphs the perception once again.

I tried to honor that strangeness by working slowly. I use a large format camera, which forces you to be deliberate and spend real time in a place. And I’d return to the same sites over years, letting meaning accumulate rather than looking and moving on.

The portals and other constructed objects in the work were my way of using symbology to make time and transformation visible as a concept. A door in the middle of nowhere is absurd. It asks a question… What is on the other side? For me those objects function as portals in the most literal sense, apertures between past and present, between what I remember and what actually exists and what could be in the future. 

You noted photography is a “fraction of truth,” what does photography fail to capture in this work, and how might that failure be as meaningful as what is shown or remembered?
Photography only records a surface, a fraction of a second, framing more out than in. I knew this going in but the full weight of it hit me hard on this project specifically, because I wasn’t just grappling with photography’s limits in the abstract, I was living them.

Years before I began this work, a storage unit fire took everything. Every photograph I had ever made. All of my family albums. And the photographs I had of my father, who died when I was seven. All I had left of him visually were my own memories, which are unreliable and fading. So I went back to the desert to make new photographs, partly to replace that lost archive, but what I came away with looks nothing like what I lost. What I made is not a document of my story. It’s more like a fiction based on a true story. And strangely, it feels more true to me than the literal photographs ever could have.

That’s the paradox I keep circling. Photography’s failure to capture the full truth created the space for something more emotionally honest to emerge. The fire took away a whole version of history and forced me to reconstruct. I had to invent. And what I built is mine in a way that a documentary record never could have been.

How does your personal narrative intersect with broader cultural or socio-economic narratives of the American desert (e.g., displacement, development, tourism, climate)?
I grew up in Palm Springs, which is a strange place to be from. It was built as a playground for Hollywood elites and retired snowbirds, gated communities, golf courses, tennis clubs, designed for people who were passing through or escaping, not for the people who actually lived there year-round. My family was not wealthy. We were locals on the fringe, and I always felt like an outsider in my own hometown, a kind of reversed displacement. So when I photograph, I’m not photographing Palm Springs the brand. I’m in the peripheral spaces of my youth, the dry lake beds, and makeshift shelters at the margins, places that hold a different story. One of people who couldn’t afford the fantasy. And maybe that’s a class narrative as much as a personal one.

And then there’s the land itself. The Coachella Valley is in the middle of a desert. It only exists the way it does because of massive water infrastructure, aqueducts that pull water from hundreds of miles away. The whole thing is precarious at best. Climate is not an abstraction here. As I photograph, I’m aware that this landscape has its own timeline that dwarfs all of our efforts to control it, and hoarding these resources will prove unsustainable.

I didn’t set out to make a political project, but I think those tensions are in the work. I think personal work does that. We can’t escape being part of the whole.

What does the title A Poor Sort of Memory suggest about the reliability of memory?
The title comes from Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass, where the White Queen tells Alice: “It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backwards.” On its face that’s nonsensical. How else would memory work? But that’s exactly what makes it interesting. Carroll is suggesting that memory doesn’t have to be fixed or unidirectional. It can work forward. It can be circular. The past doesn’t just recede behind you, it’s also present, maybe even ahead of you in ways you haven’t recognized yet.

For me, “poor” doesn’t just mean unreliable. It means limited, insufficient, sad. When I first started making this work I was trying to recover something fixed, to return to a static past and document it. What I found instead was that the past kept shifting under my feet. My childhood home was much smaller than I remembered. Specific locations looked nothing like my mental image of them. The camera kept showing me how partial and warped my version of events was.

So the title is both a confession and a provocation. Yes, my memory is poor, unreliable, incomplete, distorted by time and trauma. But maybe that instability is what makes memory a living thing rather than an archive. It keeps reshaping itself in response to who you are now. That’s actually how we survive.

How does the inclusion of human figures, such as your son, affect your interpretation of the narrative? Are they bridges from past to present, self reflective metaphors or memories? I was thinking about the ramp image here…
All of those things at once, which is what makes it complicated.

Eli (my son) wasn’t part of the original plan. I started making this work alone, out in the desert, and then COVID hit and there was no school, and suddenly I was bringing a tweenager on my photography trips. I was initially annoyed, I was in work mode and now I had to be in mom mode, and those felt like incompatible states. But then I turned around and saw him sitting on top of this old motorcycle ramp in the middle of nowhere, and something shifted. It was like a Hitchcock zoom. I looked at him and I saw myself as a kid. I saw my father. He loved motorcycles, he died in a motorcycle accident, I had lost every photograph of him in the storage fire, and here was this ramp in the landscape he would have loved. And in one frame I had all three of us: him, me, my dad. Past, present, and future all collapsed into each other. 

Eli became a child guide, a protagonist to lead me through my own story. But the closer I got, the more he resisted it, and I think that resistance was honest and important. He wasn’t going to simply be a vessel for my projections. He’s his own person. And that pushing back, that refusal to stay still as a symbol, that became part of the work too. The mother-and-son dynamic folded back on itself and complicated everything, which is exactly right for a project about the instability of memory.

There’s also Uncle Bill in the work — this adult male figure who carries both the longing for a father and the menace of the stepfather simultaneously.  Longing and danger. That’s a pretty exact description of what it felt like to be a kid in my house growing up. Together they hold this protagonist-antagonist tension throughout the work. There’s a sense of chasing ghosts and evading monsters.

Which places in your work feel most alive — and which felt like ghosts and why? Did reframing meaningful events act as a release or allow you to heal?
The places that felt most alive were the edge spaces, concrete washes, the end of a dirt road, etc. There was still a charge in those places. The isolation, the sense of potential danger and freedom existing right next to each other felt like a homecoming of sorts, even if it was an uncomfortable one.

And then there were the objects. Found things, constructed things, totems I placed in the landscape. Those became some of the most alive moments in the work for me, because an object in the right context stops being a thing and starts being a symbol. It opens up. It becomes a portal into something larger than itself, a way into a story that language alone couldn’t access. That’s where I felt most free as a photographer, in that space between the literal and the symbolic.

As for healing, I want to resist that framing a little. I don’t think this work healed anything or released anything in a clean sense. What it did was build complexity. It gave me a more nuanced relationship to my own history. I came to understand that memory isn’t a fixed record, it’s a living thing, and the only constant in it is change. It’s something more like making peace with ambiguity. 

Now that you’ve had distance on the project – what have you learned about yourself as a creative? Or what surprised you? 

The thing that surprised me most was the gap between what I set out to make and what the work actually wanted to be. The pictures I felt sure about at first weren’t the ones that lasted. The quieter, stranger, slightly-off images were the ones that kept creeping up on me over time and revealing more meaning the longer I sat with them.

That taught me something real about patience and about listening, to the pictures, to the place, to the process itself. The best images in this project are NOT the ones I planned. They arrived sideways. And I think that’s true of creative work more broadly: you have to make your way toward the thing you don’t know you’re looking for. You may have to be wrong first. I’m still learning to trust that. 

Photographer: Trevor Traynor

Now that NEWSSTANDS has been published as a hardbound book — a substantial archive of 110 kiosks across 22 cities over 12 years — how has the act of sequencing and preserving these images in print changed the way you think about the project as a cultural artifact in 2025?
When I first started photographing Newsstands it was all about framing and collecting kiosks so to speak, It felt like an open ended series that was endless and I was working very much in the present tense. What’s interesting now is that a project rooted in constantly changing headlines and the documentation of isolated kiosks has been preserved in book form. Read this way, the images function as cultural markers, mostly paired as diptychs to reveal visual and social parallels, whether it’s a sidewalk book stall along the Nile in Cairo or stacks of magazines at El Periódico on La Rambla in Barcelona. So in short, the series feels complete in book form. It’s my first hardbound book, self-published edition of 250 and I’m grateful to have it out in the world for people to enjoy.

When you transitioned Newsstands into tangible objects — from an NFT collection to broadsheet posters with a QR link — what role did the physicality of print play in how you wanted audiences to experience the work?
This marked an exciting transition for me. The book quickly became the goal and was something I felt compelled to realize but by 2022 I was also curious about the idea of preserving art on the blockchain. Because the series already had continuity in its presentation, the unified golden border naturally lent itself to becoming a cohesive on-chain collection, readable as a single & recognizable body of work rather than isolated images. To elevate the launch of that NFT collection it was important to create an IRL experience. I built a replica newsstand where visitors could physically engage with the stand and take away a piece of actual newsprint which honored the project in its most elemental form. I’ve often used the phrase Web0 kiosks, shot on Web2, minted on Web3 as a kind of tagline during that time. It speaks to pre-internet kiosks photographed on an iPhone and shared via Instagram, then permanently preserved on the blockchain. So a bit of irony in what was never meant to last has now become permeant.

When did the series shift from “something fun between commercial shoots” to a body of work with its own artistic and cultural significance?
I think the shift happened the first time I photographed a newsstand outside of New York City. It opened up a new perspective on what these kiosks might look like on a global scale. It was a top box to tick during my down time on work trips and a necessity during personal travel. I never treated it like work though, and made sure all the small encounters with kiosks operators were genuine which was important for the integrity of the project.

You’ve called a wall pop-up in Cusco, Peru “probably the most unique.” What about that specific site stood out to you?
The wall pop-up in Cusco felt like it could appear on any corner. Assembled with a metal frame and clothes pins it gave the operator the ability to set-up and takedown fast. That mobility, paired with a focus on classic items such as magazines & newspapers made the stand feel singular & somewhat timeless. Also the stack of coins he collected struck a familiar chord that echoed my childhood memories of subway tokens, or watching adults place coins on a bodega counter for a newspaper and a cup of joe. It was a quiet reminder of simpler times.

Looking at a newsstand now—amid digital media’s decline of print—how do you think these kiosks function as time capsules, and what do you hope this book preserves for future audiences?
I think simply put, it preserves memories. The act of archiving a fragment of the world through art. One of I hope to be a handful of my small artistic contributions that find their way into bookstores and libraries. I will always love photography books. Having the opportunity to release one and have folks collect it for their coffee table is an honor and feels like a rarity in this digital era.

What was the defining moment or experience that made you realize this project deserved a standalone book rather than remain a long-term photo series?
With each newsstand sharing a common thread across continents and time, creating an artifact that is itself a collection of artifacts felt important to archive. I briefly entertained going a bit meta by printing the book on newsprint, allowing the physical object to age and decline more quickly, much like the printed matter these newsstands were built to serve but in the end, I chose to give the book a little more time which in turn will feel like a true relic of relics to our newly born generation beta.

Photographer: Pierre Lavie

Heidi: How did your HEFAT training influence the way you approached the Minneapolis scene — both in terms of keeping yourself safe and in how you mentally and emotionally navigated the tension of the protest?
Pierre: Being situationally aware is crucial, and that’s something Global Journalism Security really drove home during their 3-day HEFAT course I took last August in D.C. Like many photojournalists, I have a family/loved-ones to get home to, so I want to be as safe as possible. To me, being safe in a hostile environment means being prepared and preparedness is achieved by learning how to conduct yourself in such an environment. It’s not magic. It takes time and practice. GJS provides the opportunity to learn and practice skills that might come in handy, like navigating a mob or splinting a leg. I can’t recommend GJS enough — they’re a top-notch outfit, I learned a lot, and honestly enjoyed every minute of it. My only regret is not having done it when I first started.

Can you describe the moments before this photo was taken, and your relationship to John?
As the police lined up to press the protestors, everyone knew what was coming. I put on my gas mask and helmet and waited with everyone else for them to make their move. I didn’t know John at all before this happened, but we’re texting just about daily now. He’s a great guy and I expect we’ll keep in touch.

What were the visual and emotional cues that made you decide to press the shutter at that exact split-second?
I noticed John getting swarmed by the police. As he went down, he managed to get into a prone position…instead of sprawling out flat as most seem to do, to me…while the officers piled on top of him. I moved around to face him, thinking he might look up — and he did. We saw each other. Click. He prepared to throw his camera — click — then actually tossed it — click — and then tossed his phone — click.

In your view, what story does this image tell about press freedom, civil tension, and the role of photojournalism?
John had a remarkable instinct to protect his images, and I really applaud him for that. People say/joke that he was saving his camera; he was saving his images. In all likelihood, the police would have confiscated his camera and phone and deleted everything. History keeps teaching us the same lesson: bearing witness and creating a record of events is essential to the survival and healthy growth of any democracy — through good and bad times. John gets that and had the wherewithal to respond accordingly.

What information can you share for anyone setting out to photograph these highly charged moments?
Be smart and be safe, please — for your sake and everyone else’s. Educate yourself. There are some amazing, even legendary, photographers and journalists working in Minneapolis right now (Guttenfelder, Haviv, Guzy, Moore, Decker, Rudoff, Davis, Fedorova, Allen-DuPraw, Farina Lott, Gray, just to name a few) and across the globe.
Learn from them. A lot of them are generous with their experience and wisdom if you politely reach out. From what I’ve seen, none of them are careless; they’re calculated. Emulate them.
Learn your gear. Practice using it. Have the right PPE. In these particular type situations (like Whippple), I wear a vest all the time that’s clearly marked PRESS and keep a tactical helmet, gas mask, and saline eye wash with me. It might be overkill, but it makes me feel safer, which keeps me relaxed and gives me the confidence to put myself in the situations where I can make the images I want to make and stay clear headed and calm. We all operate differently, so you need to find what works for you. …I mean, while I’m out in body armor, others are out in pants and t-shirts. We both make images. Do you.

 
   

Kora Shapes Snowboards
Nicholas Wolken

Heidi: Your creative world revolves around movement. How do snowboarding, photography, and design inform one another — and which came first?
Nicholas: Snowboarding shaped it first. I’ve always looked at the world through movement — asking where you can do something, how it would feel to ride or jump of something. Design slots into that as the tool that lets the idea become real — boards that make those visions possible. I see Photography as another tool: it captures the feeling the moment. All three share that when it’s right, you know it in your body before you can explain it.

What role does restraint play in your creative process? Your images feel timeless and avoid falling into overproduced snow-sports clichés.
I’m on the mountain as a rider first. So I can’t be shooting in the obvious moment or from the obvious angle when the riding is going on. On the other hand there’s no pressure for me to come home with photos — I shoot because it’s fun. I’m quick, a bit lazy with settings, and I look for angles on the go, letting the shots come to me rather than working for them. If I remember the camera, I pop it out, grab what’s there, and move on. I like the less obvious frames that feel closer to real life. The classic action snowboard shot is often similar so if you have seen a lot of them over the years a lot of them loose their uniqueness and it gets a bit repetitive and boring and it only represents a tiny slice of the reality and what it means to be in the mountains; the in-between moments say more about the day.

You studied psychology before dedicating yourself fully to riding and creative work. How does that background influence the way you approach photography?
Likely, but not in a way I can diagram. I feel like training as a psychotherapist also makes you a little bit more aware — of your own emotions, your state of mind, whats being said behind the words and awareness of the relationship. I can see how that would seep into everything, including how I sense and choose to capture a moment, but it’s more undercurrent than a aware technique.

You’ve mentioned the tension between being in the moment as a rider and documenting it as a creative. How do you navigate that balance of riding vs creating an image?
Snowboarding comes first. I use the in-between times — waiting, hiking, catching my breath — to shoot. That means I end up with more lifestyle, atmosphere, and rarely the big action frame. I’m not trying to balance anything; I’m just adding another layer of being creative and having fun to the day, zero pressure.

You’ve spoken about the psychology of attention and presence – does the camera interfere?
No not really I’d rather the camera disappear so I can stay in the flow connected to my self and my surroundings. I miss plenty of fleeting moments as is; a fast easy, tool helps me. Ironically, the best images often appear when it’s the last thing on your mind: too steep, too cold, a bit scared — that’s when the magic is happening and thats when I want a fast tool.

Your films like “Turn of Mind” connect snowboarding to environmental awareness in subtle, emotional ways. Do you see your photography as a form of activism or resistance?
Not knowingly yet, but you know I just realized I really should be using and seeing it as such and I hope it eventually will become just that, like my role within our Snowboard company eventually led us to work with 1% For the Planet or Snowboarding in movies for POW about important climate votes in Switzerland, I can see my photography eventually become a tool for change as well. Most of us in privileged positions have the ability to make change with what we already do. Thanks for reminding me of this!

Vjaybombs

Heidi: Who or what inspired you to become an activist-artist working with guerrilla projection tactics in public spaces?
Vjaybombs: We’re all filmmakers by trade, and projection bombing sits right in the sweet spot of all our skill sets – documentary filmmaking, animation, and beyond. Our first dabble in projecting in public spaces was about ten years ago. Back then, we’d throw these huge house parties and project onto nearby buildings – mostly abstract visuals, stuff we shot ourselves, mixed live with movie clips and music videos. It wasn’t until the lead-up to the 2024 election that we started using guerrilla projections as a form of peaceful protest.

Which came first, the merch or the projections as temporary canvases of dissent?
Projections came first. We only started making and selling merch as a way to help fund the project. Projections are accessible, disruptive, but not violent.

What change do you hope to see in the world through your work?
We want to show that it’s possible to make your voice heard and protest peacefully. Hopefully, we can inspire others to do the same. Right now, it feels more important than ever to use whatever skills we have to push back against the rise of fascism and fight for our freedoms. We all have more power than we think. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed or tune out, but we urge people to stay engaged. Real change doesn’t come from one big event – it comes from countless small acts that, together, move the needle.

How did the “projection bombing” concept get started for you and what does the name Vjay Bombs mean?
“Vjay” stands for “visual DJ,” and “bombs” comes from “projection bombing.” Both “VJing” and “projection bombing” have been around for a while – we didn’t come up with them ourselves.

How has your setup or equipment evolved?
Honestly, we were total novices when we started. The first time we went out projection bombing, we blew a fuse in our car trying to run power from the projector through a lighter adapter – rookie move. Luckily, a guy from a nearby bodega let us plug into his shop for a couple of hours. Since then, our setup has evolved a ton. We’ve upgraded from a cheap projector off Facebook Marketplace to a legit home theater model, and now we use a large-venue projector – the kind you’d find in a movie theater.

Can you walk us through your process from scouting a wall to pulling off a full-scale nighttime projection?
Everything starts in our group chat – that’s where all the ideas are born. We’re constantly talking about current events, sharing articles, and throwing around projection concepts. Whenever someone spots a great wall or surface, they snap a photo, drop it in the chat with the location. When something happens in the world that inspires us to respond, we start bouncing around ideas, exchanging visuals, and then move into animating the video. Depending on the concept, that process can take anywhere from a few hours to a few days. That said, each piece really has its own process. There isn’t one formula that works every time – but there are certain elements we like to think about when coming up with ideas. We start by pinpointing what we’re trying to say with the projection: What aspect of an issue will resonate with people? What is the emotional reaction we would like to invoke? How can we communicate a message clearly in a matter of seconds? We’re essentially creating digital billboards, so it’s crucial to grab people’s attention immediately and deliver the message as efficiently as possible. If the piece leans more satirical, we think about how to highlight the absurdity of a situation. Sometimes humor is the easiest and most effective way to get people to engage with something serious. Ideally, each projection unfolds like a mini-story – almost like a comic strip – with a beginning, middle, and end. Once the animation is ready, we move into the projection phase. This is where the environment becomes a key part of the work. The sweet spot for us is when the architecture and the message intersect – when the building itself becomes part of the story we’re telling. If the surface somehow relates to the theme or subject of the piece, that’s double bonus points. For each projection we think about what the priority is – to get as many eyes as possible or to draw attention to a specific location. And finally, there’s the posting and social media aspect of the process. Documenting everything is very important. How can we give a piece the longest legs online. We love marrying the visuals to the perfect soundtrack. Sound adds another emotional layer – it can amplify the tone, be a punchline, and deepen the impact of the message. When all those elements align – the concept, the visuals, the location, and the music – that’s the ultimate goal.

How does projection bombing fit into the larger ecosystem of street art and activism?
Projection bombing is a really unique form of street art because it’s still so new. What we’re doing would’ve been extremely difficult ten years ago (though people were definitely doing it!). With how fast technology has advanced, you can now get powerful, compact projectors for a reasonable price – something that just wasn’t possible before. As they keep getting more accessible (and brighter), we think projection bombing will become a more common form of street art and protest.

What’s next for you?
We recently hosted our first nationwide projection protest – people from across the U.S. and Europe all went out and projected on the same night. The enthusiasm and support were unreal. Watching all the videos come in was emotional – from massive city buildings to barns in the middle of nowhere. It was truly inspiring to watch. There are a lot of people who want to contribute but don’t know how. Not everyone sees themselves as creative or has time to make protest art, but the concept of the projection protest gives people a new way to engage – and allows people to make art themselves. The animations are just the first piece of the puzzle – the projection itself, and how it’s presented, is equally important. Each person becomes their own curator and part of the artwork through their own setup and location choices. Seeing everyone’s interpretations the night of the group protest was incredible. The group protest really opened our eyes to all the ways this project can grow and connect people. We definitely want to keep mobilizing the community. We’ve talked about collaborating with other digital artists on a visual album, throwing live events, and even starting a podcast.

 

Calla Fleischer

How did you decide which images or stories would make it into the final volume?
Calla: This was an enormously difficult task. My catalog is made of thousands of images taken over many years. I worked for several months both on my own and then with the help of Greg Gorman to reduce it to a few thousand and then again with Gary Johns to get it down to these few hundred chosen. Some of the images called for others to go with them to create a story. I could easily have made a book of completely different stories, but it would have the same feeling. I could also have made a book with no stories—just beautiful images—but that would be something else altogether.

Your artist’s statement mentions exploring where “culture and humanity intersect.” Can you share a specific image from the book that best embodies that intersection for you, and what the backstory was?
My Portugal project probably embodies this best. I have for several years photographed women in the rural north and urban south to show how women struggle. Their human struggle for survival has parallels in the centuries-old tenant-farming culture of rural northern Portugal and in the sexual commerce of Lisbon. They must get up each day and make it to the next. They have very little support. The men aren’t much help, if there are any. They are captured by circumstances, but the cultures in which they live are completely unalike. Two of those images are the 99-year-old woman on page 295 and a sex worker on pages 284 and 285.

As someone born in South Africa and now living in New Hampshire, how do your personal journey and identity shape the way you see, photograph, and interpret other cultures and lives?
I have lived in South Africa, England, Hong Kong, and the United States—and within the U.S., in New York, California, and now New Hampshire. In each of these places I have had to adapt: to see, feel, and read the local culture rather than brandish my own perspective, and to make new friends on their turf. Perhaps it makes me more sensitive, more of a chameleon, more able to relate one-on-one. I think this led me to be the kind of photographer that can hang back and wait before picking up my camera.

Were there ethical or emotional challenges you encountered while photographing in communities or places far from home? How did you navigate consent, representation, and vulnerability in those moments?
It really doesn’t matter how far from home I am. Many—or even most—of the people I have photographed are grounded in their own cultures and not part of mine. I respect that, and I try to capture aspects of their humanity despite the cultural distance. I wasn’t trying for any specific representation. These are stories of individuals, or small groups of individuals. None of my work is ethnographic or political. I do not take pictures where I sense or hear any reluctance to be photographed. I learned that lesson as a child when I took a picture without permission and was severely chastised by the subject. I believe I can, with most strangers—through my expression and gestures—communicate respect and a tacit request for permission, and I’m very sensitive to their reactions. You can see it in the eyes. There have been moments where I felt a little uneasy, potentially unsafe, but not many, and I’ve been able to back away when that happened. I’m not trying to steal the image in face of resistance, though I know some photographers do. Of course, in some of the shots taken on the fly or from a distance there’s no explicit consent, but I feel those are distant enough not to be intrusive.

Looking ahead, how do you envision Stories Untold influencing your future projects—in terms of subject, style, or narrative—and what new stories are you most excited to tell next?
I will continue to photograph people as I travel, trying to tell their stories. This project could go on and on, as it already has for decades. I don’t think I need to change it. But I have worked in other genres too, and maybe my next project will be a book of figure studies, celebrating the beauty of the body.

If you could sum up Stories Untold in one emotion or feeling, what would it be—and why?
It would be “sympathetic connection” to the lives I depict. Admiration, concern, inspiration, empathy, respect, wonder, delight — all positive emotions. There’s nothing to hate or to fear or to despise. I would like people looking at my book to feel the same connection and curiosity that I have felt.

In five years, what do you hope someone will say or feel when they pick up Stories Untold for the first time?
Then, as now, I hope people will feel that everyone deserves an audience, and that our humanity transcends our circumstances. Perhaps I’d also like them to give me a pat on the back for having pulled all this together—though that’s a bit self-indulgent, it’s true.

If you could go back to the first destination you photographed for this project, what would you do differently now?
I think I would spend more time listening before photographing. Early on, I was often driven too quickly by the subject and the moment. I had to learn to be aware also of the composition, the light, the mood, as well as the immediacy of the moment. Now I understand that patience reveals deeper layers of a person’s story. I would more often slow down, wait for the light, have more conversations, and allow those connections to shape the photographs in more profound ways. I think I am more confident now so can allow this to happen.

How long is your book tour, and what are the destinations?
The book tour will last about six months. It started in New York at the Leila Heller Gallery on October 9, and will include San Francisco, Sonoma, Los Angeles, London, Lisbon, and Cape Town.

Jan Erik Waider
Northlandscapes

Heidi: How did your background in visual design evolve into a deep connection with abstract landscape photography?
Jan: I have been self-employed from the very beginning of my career, starting out in graphic and web design long before photography became my primary focus. This independence allowed me to shape my own path and to travel early on, taking my projects with me at a time when remote work was far less common—and far more challenging—than it is today. Photography was always my passion and a constant companion on those journeys, especially in northern landscapes, which soon became my main geographical focus. I never had a traditional nine-to-five job—sometimes I wonder what it would feel like to actually have paid vacation. But then again, I’d probably spend that vacation the same way I already do on most of my trips—photographing from morning till night.
My design background strongly shaped the way I see and compose images. I’ve always been drawn to order within apparent chaos—structures that verge on the graphic or almost architectural. This naturally led me toward abstraction in photography, whether in ice formations, glacial rivers, or geological textures, often with a monochrome quality. Even in post-production, I approach my work much like design: reducing distractions, balancing tones and colors, and highlighting form. From the beginning, I cared less about the technical side of photography and more about aesthetics, emotion, and how an image resonates visually.

What draws you to work so closely with ice crystals, leaves, and bubbles, often in everyday settings?
I’ve always been fascinated by subjects with a fragile and transformative character. Ice is the most obvious example, but the same applies to weathered leaves, frozen bubbles, or patterns in water surfaces. These elements are constantly in flux, and each moment is unique—once it passes, it will never look the same again.
I’m naturally drawn to details and small structures, whether with a telephoto lens isolating fragments of an iceberg, a drone hovering low above a glacial river, or a macro lens capturing the texture of decaying foliage. These are motifs that most people overlook at first glance, but they hold an extraordinary beauty hidden in the mundane. I often describe this as nature’s own micro-architecture, offering endless abstract compositions—if you truly stop, look closely, and take your time. I sometimes joke that in another life I would probably have been a dog—constantly roaming around, sniffing out new things, and never getting bored.
This is also why I never tire of returning to the same landscapes. Even after dozens of journeys to Iceland, the rivers, glaciers, and volcanic landscapes never repeat themselves. Their transformations keep me curious, and every visit feels like discovering something for the very first time.

How many days are you creating seasonal imagery in these remote settings, and what is your set up?
Each year I spend around three to four months in the field, with one extended journey to Iceland lasting six or seven weeks and several shorter trips to other northern regions. I travel slowly, often with my converted off-road van, which doubles as a mobile workspace. It allows me to wake up directly at the location I want to photograph, or to simply wait out a storm—whether with a cup of coffee or by watching a favorite series—until the weather shifts.
My focus is usually on the transitional seasons—spring into summer, or summer into autumn—when landscapes are in flux and light can be particularly dramatic. Being alone in remote areas is not always easy, and solitude comes with its challenges. At times it can slip into a sense of true loneliness, but over the years I’ve learned to manage those emotions and to simply accept such days as part of the process. Traveling this way has taught me a great deal about myself—what truly drives me, what I am afraid of—and it has profoundly shaped who I am.
Of course, my camera bag is always too full—like everyone else’s—but in the end I keep returning to just a few lenses. I work with a Nikon Z8 paired with a small but versatile set: the NIKKOR Z 24–120mm for flexibility on hikes, the Z MC 105mm for macro details, and the Z 100–400mm with a 1.4x teleconverter for distant structures and abstract compositions. A DJI Mavic 4 Pro drone, along with a backup unit, completes the setup, offering aerial perspectives of glacial rivers and coastal terrain. For me, reliability and adaptability matter far more than carrying an extensive kit—this way I remain agile and focused on the experience of being out there.

Maintaining a visual diary across remote expeditions takes careful planning. What’s your workflow from the moment you return from a trip until images are archived?
My workflow actually begins while I’m still in the field. I aim to import and back up the day’s captures almost every evening, make a first rough selection, and sometimes even start editing inside the van. This early process helps me identify potential series and keeps me from being overwhelmed once I return home. At times it’s only after importing that I fully recognize the potential of a subject, which gives me the chance to return the next day and expand on it.
Back in Hamburg, I approach the images with fresh eyes and more distance. That’s when I refine the editing—mainly tonal adjustments, color grading, and contrast—to translate the emotion I felt on location into the final photographs. I don’t alter the content itself—no adding or removing elements, no replaced skies. My approach is about refining atmosphere and mood rather than reconstructing reality.
Archiving is a structured process: final selections are keyworded in Lightroom Classic according to a consistent system, backed up both locally and in the cloud, and also exported as high-res and low-res files for website and social media. From Lightroom, images are then uploaded directly via PhotoDeck to my searchable online library, for clients such as photo editors, magazines, and print customers. My library also features curated galleries based on themes, colors, and locations. This structure allows me to quickly respond to client requests, even when I’m traveling.

Do you work alone, or is there a team or network supporting image licensing, post-production, or logistics?
Most of the time I work alone, both in the field and in running my business. Solitude is an important part of my creative process—it gives me the freedom to shape my days entirely on my own terms and to connect more deeply with the landscapes I photograph. At the same time, I enjoy collaborating when it makes sense and value the exchange with others.
For certain aspects I rely on trusted partners: I outsource the production of prints to specialized labs, and my PhotoDeck library provides a professional infrastructure for licensing to clients worldwide. I also consult regularly with colleagues and peers, and I’m well connected within the photography community in my niche. When it comes to specialized topics—such as licensing frameworks, pricing, or marketing—I often seek out coaching, which helps me stay sharp and navigate an industry that is constantly evolving. And of course, I outsource my taxes as well—otherwise I would probably lose my sanity.
Through my many repeated journeys to Nordic countries such as Norway, Iceland, and Greenland, I’ve also built a strong network that extends far beyond photography colleagues. It includes production companies, logistics contacts, and local guides—connections that make complex projects in remote areas not only possible but also more efficient.
In the past, I worked with a photo rep, which gave me valuable experience in client relations and licensing. Today I handle most of these aspects myself, combining my design and marketing background with the independence I value as a photographer. This mix of autonomy in the field and selective collaboration behind the scenes ensures that my work stays personal, consistent, and true to my vision.

Tracy Hills, Outrigger scaffolding kit, June 2022.

Tracy Hills, Independent Construction Water Truck, August 2021.

Newly-Paved Streets at Sunset Southwest of the I-580, Tracy Hills, CA, December 2023.

Yogan Müller

Heidi: Your Tracy Hills imagery highlights ecological crises—like water access and wildfire risk—in a New Topographics context. What visual strategies did you use to balance documentary clarity with emotion?

Yogan: What I discovered in Tracy Hills took what I’ve been exploring for the past 10 years to a whole new level. In 2015, I documented a similar development in SW Iceland. Think new streets encroaching on rough lava terrain. Iceland prepared me for Tracy Hills, where scales were multiplied by 10.

On the first trip to Tracy Hills in August 2021, the entire Central Valley was shrouded in smoke from the Dixie Fire, which became one of the most devastating wildfires in California’s history. Setting foot in Tracy Hills, the noonday sun was filtering through the high-altitude haze, all the while casting an incredibly bright light on hundreds of houses under construction. It was 100°F. The raging fire up north and the marching construction enterprise seemed so dichotomous.

It was hard not to feel emotional when photographing this material, because it was a 1:1 reflection of the developments The New Topographics photographed in the region fifty years ago. That, of course, became a huge photographic challenge. However, for someone who hails from France and had the opportunity to further the conversation laid forth by the New Topographics was something very special. All the landscape books and photobooks I had poured myself into, all the sprawl pictures I’d avidly studied, had found a contemporary manifestation in Tracy Hills.

Walking the landscape made me feel solastalgic. Solastalgia refers to the emotions we feel when we know we are seriously altering the climate without taking sufficient action, despite the unequivocal evidence of change. At the same time, I felt the urge to photograph everything around me. I was shooting like a crazy fool. That was wonderful. So much material for my art laid around in the form of objects, textures, colors, and materials. I couldn’t stop.

The clarity you mentioned is crucial to me. In my recent projects, I have strived to distill complexity into cohesive pictures. If I think about it, it comes from my math background. Mathematics is so elegant, abstract, and simultaneously practical. Theorems, for example, often compress extremely complex concepts into a single proposition or, better, one absolute formula, from which the most vivid representations emerge. I like this idea. It informs large swaths of my work from the past several years.

All those concepts, concerns, and emotions are baked into the book, which launches this fall with Radius Books. Britt Salvesen and Greg Foster-Rice generously wrote two essays for the book. I am beyond grateful. With Radius Director David Chickey, we decided to shortcut some of the pages. That strategy creates powerful visual encounters and collisions between images and spreads. You can visibly see Tracy Hills sprawl into the edges of the ecosystem that supports the sprawling development, which has been my ultimate goal while photographing there.

Tracy Hills, double-page spread, photo courtesy of Radius Books.

Drones and LA Water Narratives, self-published book, UCLA Design Media Arts, March 2024.

Tell us about your self-published water-infrastructure book?
This self-published book is the culmination of my winter 2024 undergraduate class at UCLA Design Media Arts, where I introduced drone photography.
Students learned FAA rules, safety, and how to fly. They utilized this knowledge to focus on the Los Angeles Aqueduct that brings life to Southern California. By happenstance, my class convened shortly after the 110th anniversary of the Los Angeles Aqueduct inauguration on November 5, 1913.

I’ve always thought of drones as tools to enrich our sensory perception. I want to embrace this positive outlook and steer clear of all the other negative connotations drones are associated with.

We surveyed the aqueduct from Sylmar to Owens Lake, CA. Sylmar is where the aqueduct enters the city. The Cascades, visible from the I-5, are rather spectacular. Owens Lake, on the other hand, is, historically, the first source of fresh water for Los Angeles. Today, however, it is an engineered behemoth where the LADWP conducts dust mitigation experiments called “Best Available Control Measures.” I spent time flying there to

Airborne view of one of LADWP’s dust mitigation techniques (sprinkler irrigation), Owens Lake, CA, February 2024.

Downstream, the self-published book is a collection of diverse voices, co-designed, printed, and hand-bound by my students. I led the design and printing, and we had a lot of fun working together. This water class, survey, and book inaugurated a long-term project with the LA-based 501(c)3 Pando Populus. I will be glad to share more when the opportunity arises.

What unique storytelling potentials do photography books offer compared to exhibitions or online platforms?
A photobook is, in and of itself, a magical device and an art form. Once a show is done, it’s done. It may endure in installation pictures, memory, and sales, but it’s fundamentally done. Whereas a book circulates, reemerges, can be subject to awards, new printings, and pops up in fairs and shops far from its place of production, and years after its release. In other words, a book lasts longer and may reach a wider audience over time.

When pictures, pacing, typography, and paper work in unison, a whole world unfolds in a photobook. The very act of turning pages elicits strong visual relationships between pictures and spreads. The viewer is taken on a journey of visual encounters, emotions, and perception.

For me, a photobook opens a space for an intimate relationship between the viewer and the content. Turning pages is a sensual experience. A freshly printed book smells good. The paper has a texture that rubs on your fingertips. And pictures are visual stimuli. A photobook transforms distant subjects into an up close, felt, and even embodied experience.

I think it’s anthropologist Tim Ingold who, somewhere, wrote about the words printed in the silent pages of a book. This holds true for a photobook. I like to populate this silence with pictures that visibly encapsulate sound. Flipthrough video here

Online will always be a place in flux. For me, it’s a good space to design complementary, immersive experiences through full-screen galleries and otheri nteractive interfaces. As such, a website can be a wonderful space to share the research and creative decisions that shaped a photobook.

Your practice includes photogrammetry, drones, AI, and book design. How do these tools influence your creative process and storytelling in both personal and editorial work?
Embracing photogrammetry, drones, and AI pushed me to undertake a profound overhaul of how I use photography.
That came from teaching and engaging with faculty, students, and staff at UCLA Design Media Arts. Our department embraces new technologies wholeheartedly. Over time, I increasingly saw and used photography as an expanding field, and a medium porous to rapid, often radical technological advances–think of generative AI, for example–and a medium that has never ceased to shapeshift since 1839.

Teaching these tools and topics had me learn them inside out, which naturally pushed me to stay curious, alert, and hungry for the newest iterations. That’s one of the wonderful gifts of teaching.

Now, bearing the ecological crisis in mind, I can’t help but ponder the overlap of exponential technology and our exponential environmental footprint, a hallmark of the Anthropocene. I guess both are rooted in the idea that there are no limits to what we can do, which is, in a way, true – human ingenuity often seems unlimited – although it’s clearer and clearer that this is undermining the very conditions limitless endeavors are predicated on.

Practically, photogrammetry has thrust photography into the third dimension. Drones take it to the skies. AI taps into the enormous visual archive that is the Internet. Books open photographs to a fuller sensory pictorial appreciation that is tactile and intimate. It’s incredible to think we have easy access to such tools. At the same time, they have a dark side that can’t be ignored. That’s what artists have been doing: using the tools while critically engaging with their underlying problematic dynamics and foundations.

I am really into drones at the moment. Flying high, you decenter yourself by seeing the complexity of the world around you. I am here, on my feet, immersed in the world, piloting, and simultaneously aloft, contemplating it in flux, 50, 200, 350ft in the air. That’s what I mean by “drones enrich our sensory perception.” I am fascinated by the artistic and technical possibilities of remote sensing, so much so that I’ve launched a drone photography business called Topographica. I serve architecture, construction, and public art clients in SoCal. Drones are incredible tools to contextualize and elevate installations and constructions. They are also incredible tools to create 3D, 1:1 digital twins of real-world projects through photogrammetry. With them, artists and operators can document, map, archive, and tell stories based on data-rich, airborne images.

“Overshoot” launched in 2025 how did this idea come about?
I am grateful to Aline Smithson, Founder and Director of Lenscratch, for letting me create a dedicated space for ecologically-minded visual practices and conversations. Overshoot stems from a deep care and love for the environment, ecological arts and justice. We live in ecological overshoot. That is the central premise of the column. In homage to Donna Haraway, I want to “stay with the trouble”.

Overshoot also stems from the central claim of my practice-based PhD thesis–completed in 2018: photography is one of the tools that brought us into the Anthropocene. In hindsight, this line of inquiry, which I’ve explored in my manuscript and fieldwork in SW Iceland, was a reaction to what I learned when studying photography in Brussels. I’d often hear: “That’s just an image,” which always resonated as “photography is nothing more than an image.” That not only seemed at odds with all the time and care I’ve always put into planning trips to Iceland and making photographs there, but also didn’t take into consideration the historic and metabolic ties between photography and energy.

Overshoot holds space for conversations, portfolios, and scholarly essays that directly engage with this moment of ecological overshoot. Ecologically-minded works and practices abound and are incredibly diverse. My goal is to offer artists a platform to share, discuss, and promote their work. I am also curious to know how they’ve come to grapple with the ramifications of ecological overshoot.

I’ve just interviewed Siobhan Angus. Siobhan published an important book with Duke University Press last year titled “Camera Geologica. An Elemental History of Photography,” in which she traces the mineral extraction, use, and flows that have shaped photography over space and time. That is a fascinating and richly-layered history I’d encourage everyone to read. Her interview will be out on September 12. As a brand, Overshoot attempts to capture the exponential rise and use of photography. We still say we “shoot” images, and frequently mention the information and visual overload we experience online every day. That is also what informed Overshoot’s visual identity.

Alex Turner: Blind Forest

We caught up with photographic artist Alex Turner, whose work lives where vision meets sensation and ecology meets memory. In his acclaimed Blind Forest series now showing at Marshall Gallery, Turner uses thermal imaging to reveal the hidden life of trees—turning them into living witnesses, storytellers, and  ethereal portraits of our changing world.

Your images often make the invisible visible. What drew you to thermal imaging as your primary tool in Blind Forest?
Alex: What drew me to thermal imaging was its ability to reveal what’s normally invisible not just heat, but a different way of seeing vitality, presence, and change. In Blind Forest, I wanted to portray trees not as passive background elements, but as active, responsive organisms—beings that store energy, regulate their environments, and bear witness to time in a way few other living things can. Thermal imaging allowed me to visualize those hidden dynamics: the conservation, transmission, and loss of heat within and around each tree. But it wasn’t just about ecology—it was also about cultural memory. Many of the trees I photographed hold long histories, both ecological and human. Some were cultivated by Indigenous communities for food and medicine; others stand on sites of forced labor, displacement, or violence. Trees have absorbed these layered histories, and the thermal camera offered a way to suggest that embeddedness. Heat becomes a kind of residue, a trace of what a tree has lived through or is currently enduring. In that sense, thermal imaging became a way to look at trees not only as biological subjects, but as cultural witnesses.
I was also interested in repurposing a technology typically used for surveillance, hunting, or fire detection—tools often associated with control or extractive thinking—and turning it toward something more reverent and speculative. The resulting images resist literal interpretation; they ask the viewer to slow down, to sit with ambiguity, and to consider the forest as a place where both natural systems and human histories are in constant flux.

What are the ethical considerations behind obscuring or withholding your image locations?
Withholding specific locations is both an ethical and conceptual choice. On one level, it’s about protection. Many of the trees I photograph are old, vulnerable, or located in ecologically sensitive areas. Publicizing exact coordinates can unintentionally invite harm—through increased foot traffic, extraction, or even vandalism. In an age of geotagging and digital overexposure, some places need anonymity to survive. But there’s also a deeper philosophical and cultural reason. Many of these trees hold significance not just ecologically, but culturally—especially to Indigenous communities who have long-standing relationships with these species as sources of medicine, food, and spiritual meaning.

Withholding location becomes a gesture of respect, recognizing that these trees are not simply photographic subjects or aesthetic objects, but beings embedded in cultural systems of value and care that precede and exceed my presence as an artist.

More broadly, I’m less interested in offering a precise where than I am in encouraging a deeper look at the land, how we relate to nonhuman life, how we carry stories of place. By withholding coordinates, I invite the viewer to encounter the tree not as a destination or trophy, but as a living presence. This choice also pushes back against the extractive tendencies of both landscape photography and colonial mapping practices. Naming a place, claiming it, and presenting it as “known” can flatten its complexity. In Blind Forest, I want to keep some things partially obscured—not to mystify, but to honor the idea that not everything is ours to name, frame, or expose.

What role does fieldwork play in your practice—how do you locate and build relationships with your subjects?
I spend a lot of time hiking, researching, asking questions, and building relationships. With Blind Forest, that meant working closely with arborists, forest ecologists, historians, and Indigenous knowledge-keepers to locate trees that carry not just ecological significance, but cultural and historical weight as well.
Sometimes a tree is introduced to me through a historian or ecologist; other times I come across one by accident, and then spend weeks or months trying to understand its context—how it fits into a broader ecosystem, who has cared for it, what it has witnessed. I try to return to sites multiple times, sometimes across seasons, to watch how the tree responds to heat, drought, wind, or fire. That temporal intimacy feels crucial.

It’s not just about finding “beautiful” trees—it’s about seeking out complexity, endurance, and entanglement. And it requires a certain kind of humility. These aren’t blank canvases or passive subjects; they’re living beings embedded in systems that far exceed my own timeline. Fieldwork, for me, is about cultivating a practice of attention—being present, doing the research, and recognizing when to step back.

How does your work address climate and ecological loss without relying on traditional documentary tropes?
I’m interested in climate and ecological issues, but I try to approach them through a slower, more reflective lens—one that resists the spectacle and elegiac tendencies often found in traditional environmental documentary work. Rather than show devastation directly—burned forests, parched landscapes, suffering wildlife—I focus on subtler forms of presence and absence. The thermal images in Blind Forest don’t depict disaster as bluntly; they reveal systems under stress, energy in transition, and histories held quietly in living organisms. It’s a way of inviting viewers to feel their way into these questions, rather than confront them with fixed narratives. I think traditional documentary often relies on visibility to create impact—showing what’s been lost, what’s on fire, what’s at risk. And while that has real value, I’m drawn to a more speculative, even poetic approach. One that makes room for ambiguity, wonder, and grief to coexist. Thermal imaging helps with that—it doesn’t render the landscape in familiar terms, but through a register of energy that is less about appearances and more about relationships: between organism and environment, between past and present, between perception and reality.

If you could pass on one technical or philosophical principle to photographers working with landscape today, what would it be?
If I could pass on one principle, it would be to slow down—both technically and conceptually. Landscape photography has long been associated with grandeur, clarity, and conquest—the wide view, the decisive moment, the untouched wilderness. But in reality, landscapes are layered, politicized, lived-in, and constantly changing. They deserve more than just aesthetic appreciation; they deserve attention, patience, and humility. Slowing down might mean spending more time with a place before photographing it. It might mean learning its ecological and cultural histories, or questioning your own presence within it. Technically, it could mean working with processes that stretch time—like stitching, long exposures, or analog materials—not for nostalgia’s sake, but to make space for complexity. Philosophically, it’s about resisting the impulse to extract a single, striking image and instead engaging with the landscape as a collaborator, not a subject. There’s so much urgency in the world right now, especially around climate and ecological loss— but I think slowness can be a form of resistance. It lets us listen more carefully, look more closely, and imagine more responsibly.

Can you walk us through that moment in the clonal Aspen grove—when you realized the coyote was there? What were you feeling, and how did that experience shape the resulting image?
I was camping alone in the middle of the aspen grove when, late at night, I heard something rustling nearby. It was pitch black—I couldn’t see a thing. I reached for my thermal scope and spotted a coyote, no more than twenty feet away, perfectly still, staring directly at me. It sent a chill through me. There was something unsettling in that moment of mutual recognition, but also a profound sense of asymmetry. The coyote, with its excellent night vision, could see me plainly. I could only return its gaze through the mediation of a camera.

That moment shifted something in me. I became acutely aware of how dependent I was on technology to perceive what was otherwise invisible to me. The thermal scope didn’t just reveal the coyote—it revealed the limits of my own perception. And in that same instant, the forest around us—specifically, the clonal aspen colony I was there to photograph—took on a different kind of presence. The coyote wasn’t a singular visitor; it was part of a continuous ecosystem, one in which I was the outsider, looking in.

What made you decide to keep the coyote out of focus, and instead focus on the tree behind it? Was that choice aesthetic, conceptual, or instinctive in the moment?
In my previous project Blind River, I used remote sensing technologies triggered by movement to capture subjects as they passed through the landscapes of the U.S.–Mexico border. That process—especially the AI recognition software attempting to isolate figures from their surroundings—raised compelling questions about how we determine what is distinct from a landscape, and why. Who or what is considered a visitor? A trespasser? A part of the scene or apart from it? With Blind Forest, I wanted to invert that logic and shift the focus entirely toward the landscape —specifically, the trees—as enigmatic, sentient, and sometimes charismatic subjects. It was a move toward a more ecocentric perspective. Everything else—humans, wildlife—would become secondary. Deliberately placing the coyote out of focus was shaped directly by my experience with the animal. It became a way of acknowledging that this place wasn’t about the drama of my human- wildlife encounter. It was about the quiet, persistent presence of the forest itself—an ancient, interconnected organism. The coyote became part of the story, but not the center of it.

There’s a lot of talk in photography about capturing the ‘decisive moment.’ But your process seems to stretch that moment across time and space. How do you think stitching affects the way we experience time and presence in an image like this one?
I think it’s important to explain the stitching process, because it speaks directly to some of the deeper conceptual undercurrents of the work. At first glance, it may seem like you’re looking at a singular moment in time. But each image is actually composed of over a hundred smaller frames, stitched together over the course of up to an hour. That temporal stretch is embedded in the final image, even if it’s not immediately visible.

I’ve always struggled with the idea that photography is primarily a medium for capturing a single, decisive moment. That notion implies a kind of narrative closure—that the moment photographed contains the essence or climax of a situation. But in reality, most events and environments are far more layered and unfolding. Freezing a single frame can flatten that complexity, and at worst, it can project the illusion of objectivity—a supposedly ‘truthful’ instant that’s actually shaped by countless subjective decisions: where you stand, when you click the shutter, what you include or exclude. In Blind River and again in Blind Forest, I’m interested in challenging that sense of fixed truth and instead suggesting that narrative—and presence—is continuous. With Blind Forest, the subject matter itself encourages this shift. Trees appear still, even static, to the human eye. But they are constantly exchanging energy with their surroundings.

Thermodynamics upends our assumptions about their stillness. Heat moves, radiates, dissipates—those rates of change make time visible in subtle, surprising ways. The thermal camera doesn’t just record temperature—it reveals time embedded in matter: a burned scar, a cooling trunk, a stressed limb. The forest becomes not a frozen scene, but a living system in flux. And through the stitching process, I’m trying to honor that slowness and complexity—to hold space for presence that isn’t defined by the instant, but by duration, accumulation, and transformation.