Raftography Writing

From February 2nd to 23rd, 2024, I participated in my first photography show in years. Mary-Anne, the wonderful President of The ARTS at Marks Garage, whom I would meet for the first time because of this show, invited artists of all mediums to submit pieces into a fantasy-laden theme – Once Upon a Time… I would never have considered submitting to a theme like this, but my wonderful wife (holy shit, that feels cool to write in a blog post – we just got married a couple of weeks ago), who knew that I had been stagnant in letting my creative passions out into the world, found the opportunity and skillfully poked at me to begin thinking about including a submission as part of a new set of creative goals. I work-shopped the idea as I sorted through archives of pictures and went for walks in the woods to download from my own brain what the fairy tale was that I wanted to tell.

The following images were the result of my pondering, curating, and creating. I realized that my mind was dripping into a fairy tale gone wrong. I kept thinking to myself that right now, at this moment in time, I don’t feel like I can tell a cartoony, Disney, technicolor tale that has characterized many of my photos over the years. The reality is that I always see beauty in the natural world, but my day-to-day work teaches me that we are tip-toeing ever so close to a darkness that we do not want to fall into. The titles of the images below are what I submitted and showed at the gallery, but I have added more to the story in this blog post that takes you on a journey into my mind, how it sees our current world, and leaves the door open for a change.

---

Once Upon a Time, There Was Magic in Decay…

This fairy tale takes place not in a land far, far, away, but here, earth, where a leaf falls in the fall, becomes detritus, a microbial meal, a catalyst for future fabled beasts to rise to the sky. What was once life becomes decay and feeds the magical mycelial network of underground cognition – facilitating the talking of trees, the absorption of warming gases, and the release of breathable gases. The magic is swift, defoliation to regrowth in months, death to life, another ring on an ever-expanding trunk belt. These spells have been cast for millennia as our ancestors walked the earth and for megaannums before sapiens conquered the lands and began mixing different kinds of potions than the cosmic ones brewed by the universe. These recent human breeds of potions have been potent. The chop of technology is undoing eons of accumulated spell-working. 

---

Happily Ever After Scorched (by the Hot Breath of Industrial Consumption)

Seasonal defoliation is not the same as rapid deforestation or uncharacteristic burning. The latter lacks the mystical regrowth. From an overview effect, the once colorful and regenerative fairy tale is Grimm. Our world is on fire without a dragon in sight; the hot breath of industrialization the culprit, spewing from the salivating mouths of a culture lost in the convenience of consumption. The beautiful creatures of earth are now in jeopardy. The breadcrumbs are disappearing as our footsteps march onward toward the raging hot furnace. Perhaps we have created even more dangerous reptilian monsters than the mythical beasts of our stories; modern dragons are not elegant flying beasts, they are the crude smokestacks of cancerous and thoughtless growth.

---

Last Stand (In the Face of Collapse)

We have tunneled with impressive ingenuity, crafting and creating, building and manipulating, thirsting for something greener while making it browner. The masses cry freedom, subtly replacing its meaning with selfishness. We brace ourselves between the eroding walls that we neglect to upkeep. Our voices scream sustainability while our actions ferociously contradict our stated intentions. Do we know that it is crumbling? There is light, but the tunnel is collapsing, the walls are caving, and the arms of a few cannot forever hold the weight of the many. If forever after is going to include us, humans, there will be a reckoning, an embracing of de-growth, champions of a collective community that amasses our greatest achievements, learns from our most unforgivable mistakes, and treads lighter in the magical realm that we were gifted. Our heroine is the earth herself…

This fairy tale doesn’t need an ending. In fact, that may be what we are trying to avoid. I don’t have all the answers, but if you want to scroll to the bottom of my last blog post, I shared a few places that I think we can all start.

Are you interested in seeing more photos from the show? You can find the entire album here. If you are interested in prints of any of them, please reach out to me at [email protected].

---

Interested in following along with me more?