Back to My Roots

The title of the first collection is the Root of it All. It began as a way for me to go back into my past and dig up a lot of buried emotion that was never expressed. As I continued to think about the name of the collection I realized the aesthetic could be deeper, more genuine and rooted in the place of origin.

I grew up in Hanson, Kentucky on 75 acres of farmland. As I grew up I became used to the scenery. It lost its wonder as I looked at it everyday. I stopped exploring and the saturated green and baby blue of the foliage against the sky never changed. I became bored and wanted something different. Eventually I went off to college in Lexington, KY. Of course I went home for summers and holiday breaks, but I was mostly looking at high-rises and pavement. Eventually I stopped going home for the summer and stayed in Lexington for the long summer breaks. As before, I became bored of looking at the same poorly made and over expensive apartment complexes or the rundown streets with potholes that will send your car straight to the mechanic. Through vacations to the Smoky Mountains, or various beaches, I realized nature is something I took for granted and missed dearly. I couldn't wait to get back to it.

As I had finished creating the collection, it was time for me to shoot the entire thing. I conceptualized a set, contacted my models, organized the whole thing, but in the end something was missing. It felt forced like I was trying to emulate something I’m not. I began thinking about what exactly the problem was and why I was running into these problems. Were my ideas just bad? Did the collection not capture the aura that I was trying to catch?  Was I uninspired? As I looked back at the entire collection, its inspirations, and even the title itself I realized I had to go back to my beginnings more than just through thought. I had to physically create the same way I used to when I was making realistic paper guns, or working with wood from the craft store to make catapults, or taking pictures of the trees in my backyard with my iPhone. I had to go back home. I had to go back to my roots and create the only way I absolutely knew how; with the bare minimum. No photographer, no extra lighting, no studio set, no “perfect conditions”. I needed to keep what was necessary and do away with what was not.

Reverting back to how I used to create was just the beginning of truly getting back to my roots.

I took my camera and my collection back home. My old friend Mikaila would be home the same weekend. She also happens to be a model so I asked her if she’d be interested in another shoot. We had shot once before when we were both learning the ropes, but this time I had a vision and we both had a lot of practice under our belts. We got together at my house, tried on a bunch of different outfits, caught up, and then went outside to shoot just like before.

This small overgrown grass field in my backyard was something I had seen hundreds of times all over the state. It was nothing special or interesting. In fact, my mom told me it was the perfect breeding ground for rodents and a great place for snakes to hide so I stayed far away from the overgrown grass. The grass became a symbol of a kind of surrender to nature just an old fallen tree. I believe that this project is a way of finding and taking advantage of the forgotten or the uninspiring. The things I never thought twice about would become a source of beauty and inspiration. Figuratively and literally, they would become the background of my work.