Illinois River/Town

These photographs were made along rivers throughout Illinois, tracing landscapes where forests, waterways, and prairies are being actively restored and protected. Rather than serve as documents, they function as quiet acts of attention, images that ask the viewer to slow down and reconsider what is being seen, and to encounter these places as living systems rather than passive scenery.

Many of the works are created using the historic wet plate collodion process, in formats ranging from 4×5 to 8×10. This materially sensitive method allows environmental elements: dust, water, air, to interact directly with the surface of the image. In this way, the landscape participates in its own representation. These traces act as a kind of organic record, embedding time, place, and presence into the photograph itself.