My senior thesis, Then, as it was, then again it will be is named after the first line in the song “Ten Years Gone” by Led Zeppelin. I chose this name to commemorate the end of my time attending Skidmore College and this feeling of revisiting the person I was at the beginning of college. Landscape always plays a role in my work and my exploration of Saratoga Springs is an integral part of these photographs. I’ve found both photos and affection year round in its harsh Winters and its green Summers.

I wanted to incorporate the practice of mindfulness into the way I made photos. Mindfulness focuses on noticing the world around you without judgement or interpretation. Mindfulness became a guide to making photos allowing me to be more patient and see details I could not before. I began to notice how my body interacted with the natural landscape, allowing me to feel freer. Walking the paths of woods and town allowed me to practice a way of viewing the world guided by and for my body.

  I’ve seen over my four years at Skidmore the inevitability of change but also the circular nature of life. The seasons represented this for me as I used my own body and camera as tools to explore the movement between sharpness and softness. In moments where the bitterness of winter felt inescapable I reminded myself of the way Spring would come to melt the ice. The animals in hibernation would come out and follow them eagerly were people. Using nature and connection with the world as a guide.

Despite the gratitude and admiration I feel during Spring I cannot help but remind myself winter will come home again. Instead of rejecting the cold I learned to embrace it. I wanted to extend the reverence I had for the natural world to my own body; in all of its forms. If I am unable to recognize my body in its beauty then this project has allowed me to see the ways in which it functions is far more important than how it appears. Stretch marks which I have wished to eradicate became roots, markings of growth, scrapes and bruises, signs of resilience. The life line on my palm is like a river. These photos were taken over the course of three months through slow cautious steps over ice and afternoons laying in the grass. I included different parts of my body on translucent sheets of fabric allowing me to hold parts of myself softly in my hands. The same gentleness and curiosity I’ve learned to hold a photograph with is the way I want to hold my body.