A Pleasant Peninsula

In 2021 I created a body of work on 35mm capturing Midwestern Americana- the quintessential American summer experience of the small lakeside town I spend my summers in. I went into the trip with the intention of building upon that project, but the things I love about this place were the reasons I quickly realized I couldn’t do that. This town seems to exist in a bubble- I change and grow older year by year but everything here stays the same. I bring new experiences, new memories, and new feelings whenever I return, and they shape and mold the way I interact with my environment. I knew I had changed, that so many things had changed in the last year such that this old project felt like a dead end. I was no longer interested in perceiving and recording. I started to wonder more about feeling… trying to boil down a moment to its essence rather than just depicting the scene. I know what the carefree, sun-soaked Michigan summer looks like, but what does it feel like? The result is a much more minimal, abstract series of images, focused on color, on shape, on symmetry and on feeling. Feelings of contentment, of nostalgia, of blissful childlike ignorance.