In this project, I explore home. What it means to be home, literally and figuratively. Such a used phase, to go home, to be home, etc. And the wealth of meanings it can hold. Leading up to this project, I hadn’t been home in a bit and hadn’t felt home in much longer. Each photo is somewhat of an ode to the home I once never questioned. Each is made there, physically, in different spots. The wood stove, the view from the upstairs window, the top of my bedside lamp, a stack of wood rounds to be split. The photos are all in black and white too, the gray, the grain, and the old lettering, suggesting memory and times past. The last photo being an exception, taken while looking down at my feet as if I had dropped the bright letters and I just needed to take a step back and look down to see what was right in front of me.

I was sitting in rehab on Christmas day, thinking about a sentence that had popped into my head nearly three months prior after a hard conversation with a close friend when I started assembling this project. ‘You are only home once you have found home inside.’ I knew these photos were meant for those words, even as I took them in the fall, but I hadn’t known how until then. I had just started to find home within, sitting there in rehab, my mind a bit less muddled by the substances I used to numb, a bit louder from the lack thereof. But I had started to find myself a home in this body and mind that I have battled with for so long, an ease was spreading ever so slow that didn’t drown out the noise but rather worked with it.

This project is a summary of those stirrings, a start of the journey, a guiding statement I try to keep in mind as I stumble through the maze of life. And, oh, the fun, the pain, the hurt, the confusion, and the nice sunsets along the way have begun to feel just a bit warmer.