Hotchkiss

Through the creation of a pseudo-fictionalized space Hotchkiss explores elemental landscapes that are geographically decontextualized in order for place itself to function as a container that can alter human emotion and create specific psychologies.

Inspired by Russian writers dictation of setting “in the town of O. in the providence of N.” And the experiences that came out of my own time living in a rural hamlet, Hotchkiss explores how landscape can function outside of its objective restraints, affect emotion, influence behavior, and create specific psychologies. 

Through my pictures I am invested in navigating these highly charged dichotomic spaces that flip through an array of emotions: Vitality and death, bliss and madness, comfort and destabilization, and community and isolation. This constant cycle affects residents and makes for intense human and landscape interaction. At these sites of interaction, the landscape itself becomes its own multifaceted character. Leaving both the viewer and subjects throughout the series entangled with varied sets of symbols signifying to specific emotions, a landscape in flux, and space to disappear into. 

By using a mix of in camera strategies to visualize these dualities, emotions, and symbols I hope to create a larger conglomerate space that functions as a  fictionalized container to make viewers question notions of home, the natural world, and landscape itself.