An Obituary for an Apple Grove

The preceeding are portraits of each member of the first generation of Huber Groves in Midway, UT. These trees settled with the original community that first populated the Midway valley over 120 years ago. Their existence helped to manifest synergy here.

The trees provided shade, the people provided company.

The trees provided fruit, the people provided mouths.

The trees provided space, the people provided place.

As these ancestors of the valley thaw into their final summer, these images will transcend to carry on their legacy. In their aged faces lies the reminder that their roots anchored them in a space. That then provided a place.

Sleeping on Trains

As I begin to assimilate back into American society, I fear that a complete transition might not be totally possible.

And yet, I realize that sensation is exactly what I hoped for when I left for traveling abroad.

While driving me to the airport, my father asked me: Why Europe?

At the time I answered with something of the old cliché. You know, I want to broaden my perspective.

In 20/20 hindsight I can see that question had no answer at the time it was asked.

Impromptu visits to places not yet marked on my map, mistaking trains, climbing out of bathroom windows to wine and dine rooftops, turning parks into playgrounds again, running through ancient gardens and making thimble-sized coffee endure for hours between packs of cigarettes.

As I unlocked new passages into cultures I had yet been exposed to, I realized that the lucid opportunity of travelling is not about where you are at all.

In a space that is unfamiliar to us we enter a void to which we are predisposed. We let go of the corruptive conveniences that often times shove their way to the foreground of our agendas and breathe in the chance of uncovering a world raw to the individual.

“Live a life full of mind, exhilarated by new ideas and intoxicated by the romance of the unusual.” Ernest Hemingway

From now on I will forget the map, and always remember to keep one foot outside of the anticipated.

Sleeping on trains will always be the unsurpassed means of travel.

Paradigms of Park City: Progression Measured Through a 35 mm

Park City has a history separate from the familiar Mormon settlement of Utah. According to Utah Historical Quarterly, Park City grew up as a community in which “the tale of the people and the tale of the mines is indistinguishably intertwined.” 
As an Environmental Journalism major, I find these existing links between humanity and the surrounding environment to be both intriguing and enlightening. When Park City resurrected, a symbiotic relationship ensued between the land and the people who inhabited it. The mines existence allowed for Park City’s existence, and Vis versa. The lands grew alongside the community and fueled its progression.  

A booming mountain town in present day, another industry is to be thanked for Park City’s rise to fame. The mines that were once the center of commerce and livelihood now lie abandoned, deteriorating away in their elusive pockets. Long forgotten dwellings of advancement, these hollowed out buildings haunt the landscape with their half-life reminder of what once defined Park City and its people. 

Definitions place parameters, putting the essence of something into a box. Places and people evolve, and what is defined advances on into a new generation. 

In 2015 the mines live on, but only in a historical sense. What was once a measuring stick for economic, social and cultural progression now survives only as a shadow. The ghostly definition of what used to be lies in purgatory, waiting to be destroyed or reinterpreted. 

These images are from the Silver Coalition mines in Park City. 

Film photography connects me to the organic pulse of the world around me- the natural rise and fall of people, places and things. I feel an energy that draws me into survived places like the PC mines because they remain in existence uncorrupted by the politics of progress.  

I explore into these places that have resonated into the landscape and hope to gain an enlightened interpretation of what used to be. 

Who are the people that touched it? 
Where has the history of this place gone to rest?  
Why did the connection between this land and the people living in it cease to exist? 

What remains unanswered speaks most powerfully to me behind a lens. I become vulnerable to the things I cannot necessarily explain or define, release my inhibition, and click to capture.  

With each picture I create the more comfortable I become with surrender. There is a long disorderly journey from the concept of a film image to its processed and printed picture, and often times the results are unpredictable. 

Entropy: lack of order or predictability; gradual decline into disorder. 

As described, entropy in itself will eventually deteriorate away from its own definition. I believe in Entropy. I believe that undefined pieces of entropy are the only thing that define life as it propagates daily. 

Catching the essence of our surrounding world as it exists sheds a rare light of interpretation. When I see an image come to life in the dark room I am reminded of how the moment looked when I surrendered to it.  

A tale that is now indistinguishably intertwined with my life transcends and I can feel my powerless yet integral part in this world’s ever-evolving entropy. 

 “The earth has music for those who listen.” –Shakespeare 

An unsettling peace sets in, and that ghostly definition that lies in purgatory comes back to life.