Following my father's death, I had the disorienting experience of registering his absence from the enduring landscapes that framed his life. My response was to make photographic diptychs, scenes with myself both present and absent, in various settings I associated with him. I soon discovered that these hybrid images were not just about loss or mortality, but were giving form to ideas I had long struggled to express regarding the coextensive nature of environment and self. The diptychs ask the viewer to consider anew the shared physicality of body and landscape. They suggest an essential sameness in our love of place and of each other.
The idea of an ultimate unity that transcends division is present in the Buddhist concept of non-duality, which holds that self and not-self are not mutually exclusive categories. Similar is some ways is the ecological insight that we are not discrete entities, but exist in constant flux with the physical world around us. The images here form one thread of my engagement with these deeper understandings. They are personal meditations on the mysterious certainties of love, physical existence, and the passage of time.
