July 2023 Studio Reflection

Imagination as a tool for action

I feel like this year keeps going faster and faster somehow. Even though I feel like I am more rooted and present than I have ever been in my life, time seems to be sliding through my fingers, and now things that seemed far away feel very imminent. Life has also filled tremendously, sometimes spilling over. I would call it busy, though busy feels a little hollow, and though I am juggling schedules, both work, art, and body related, it feels richer than busyness.

At the beginning of the month I was in upstate New York teaching a summer camp photography workshop. I really enjoy and appreciate when I can work with kids and see them discover film photography for the first time. The group of kids I was working with didn’t have the same nostalgia around film that I have, as someone who grew up during the societal transition from analog to digital, so for some of them this was their first experience with a camera that you couldn’t immediately see the photograph that you took with it.

While I was teaching the summer camp, the wildfires in Canada were contributing to poor air quality in New York, the effects of which I could feel as I spent time outdoors. There is an impression that wellness culture can often impart upon people that our health is solely our individual responsibility, and there has never been a time in my life more than right now in which I strongly disagree with how our health is framed by individual choice.