Homebody

Our bodies and the landscapes around us are home. I was raised in the minimalistic scenery of New Mexico: silhouetted mountains sleeping on long horizons, sand dunes that shape-shift with time, skies that stretch up high. These places were the backdrop of my upbringing, imprinting themselves into my identity and sense of place. “Homebody” blurs the lines between bodies of land, water and flesh through play of form and pastel color. In these overlays, mountains from Cape Town start a conversation with knees shot in North Carolina, or the curve of a New Mexican sand dune mirrors the mound of my own breast. Alone, these photographs of landscapes and bodies, which I collected throughout four years of making new homes as I traveled, say little. Together, however, they tell stories – “Homebody” is an exploration of the way post-production can be used to composite disparate memories, experiences and feelings into a single photograph. The ambiguity of these overlays communicates the complexity of nostalgia, of the overlapping remembrances that form our memories of place and time. I shot many of these images in Cape Town, Australia and New Mexico, where in all locations terrain is controversial. After spending significant time in each place, I endlessly turn over the same questions. Who does this land belong to? Who was here first? Who claims it as home? How do our bodies carve themselves into landscapes and mark their territories? The series stands alone but can be interpreted with a poem, which I wrote in stanzas that accompany each image (please view each image description for each photograph's stanza).