An Exaltation of Larks

An Exaltation of Larks is a testimony to panic, joy, solitude, and love.

From a very young age, I found myself living far from everyone I knew. Home was always a safe yet broken place I desperately wanted to leave, and as a kid, pursuing my dreams felt like the only way to avoid breaking the way the people I loved had. Once I was far from home, I experienced an early taste of the joys of solitude but with time I became solitary and began to give in to nostalgia, compelled to revisit a place I had once longed to leave behind. As I moved from one place to another—visiting home whenever I could—I grew tired of failing to form loose flocks and of being left alone and detached. It took many years and places for me to learn that the nest I wanted to build needed solid ground, not a high tree, and that to find my long-desired ideal flock, I needed to migrate once again.

I left my childhood home 22 years ago, and now that my migration has stopped, the truth is, after all these years, I still close my eyes and look back with wonder, and still, only in confusion, do I go on.

An Exaltation of Larks is an attempt to respond to my own detachment traumas and the quiet, intimate moments that exist within new close relationships. These photographs are not about grand gestures or visible actions but rather the unspoken emotions that fill the spaces between people in my life and the solitude that often lingers even in companionship. An Exaltation of Larks is a testimony to panic, joy, solitude, and love.