Submission

I’ve been working on a series at 4 a.m. one morning each week for the last few years. It’s a magical time: the city is dark, but it doesn’t feel threatening. It’s quiet, calm, and it feels like it’s yours. As I photographed over these last few years, I found myself drawn to water. The Mississippi River has always pulled me to its banks, and it takes on a whole new level of mystery when experienced in solitude early in the morning. The sky is much darker in person than it is in the resulting photograph – the long exposures lighten the dark sky to an unnatural state. The final image is based in reality but largely becomes something that is made only as a camera can see it. The resulting series is documentary in nature, but the images retain a mystifying quality that’s not found in a straightforward documentary project.