I wander into the woods not to see, but to feel, to surrender to the rhythms of the natural world and let it carry the weight I cannot name. My black and white, abstract photographs are born from this surrender, from the ache and turbulence of grief pressed into the crevices of my soul and the pulse of nature. Each step through fallen leaves, each brush against cold ice, is a rehearsal of the emotions I carry—anger, grief, sorrow, and longing—and the camera becomes my instrument for translating these intangible currents into form.
In this work, everything is visceral. Twisting branches, fractured sunshine through clouds, the jagged edge of stone, and the shimmer light dancing on water all become extensions of my inner turmoil. The abstract nature of the images mirror the abstraction of emotion itself. Grief cannot be neatly contained, and it does not resolve in tidy shapes. By removing color, I strip the world to contrasts of light and shadow, echoing the monochromatic spectrum of feelings that flow through my spirit. The black and white palette is my language of extremes, of silence and noise, of absence and presence.
Creating these images is almost ritualistic. There is an intimacy in this process, this dialogue between me and the world, between delight and darkness, between mourning and light. The act of photographing becomes an emotional release, a spiritual confrontation, a negotiation between presence and absence.
A stoic beauty is born from collision. Shadows merge with light in unexpected ways, and the compositions contain a strange coherence, a quiet suggestion that in strife there is connection, and even in chaos there is form. Each photograph holds the echo of a moment spent fully immersed in the nature and emotion of my own inner landscape. These images invite the viewer to step into my intensity, to meditate with me. Through black-and-white abstraction, I attempt to confront my anguish and to allow the raw currents of grief resonate in a form that is both personal and universal.
I entered the woods with intention, to observe the outer world and to recalibrate my inner one. Each step was a miracle.
The Viking Panda 