Lost Lake

A visual lament about the loss of vision and of the forest as it once was. Lost Lake is a meditation upon fragility and beauty, discovery and disorientation.

LOST LAKE

You should lie down now and remember the forest,

for it is disappearing--

no, the truth is it is gone now

and so what details you can bring back

might have a kind of life.

 - from The Forest by Susan Stewart

Lost Lake is a meditation upon fragility and beauty, discovery and disorientation.  The series originated during the pandemic when walking the forest became a refuge from the surreal quality that everyday life had assumed.  This series also reflects the influence of time spent with my young grandchild who is blind. Glimpses of light, and shades of color slip in and out of her perceptual field, but it is the tactile and aural that inform and shape her understanding of the world.  Lost Lake reflects my effort to understand her experiences as she walks the forest with me, and as such I have embraced the use of the photographic glitch, abstraction, and applied color fields. The abstracted patterns are suggestive of scientific recordings (weather, earthquakes, climate records and medical monitors), or the textures of tree bark and other patterns of nature.  They might also mirror the movement of fingers, touching and exploring (she sees with her hands).  Lost Lake is also a lament.  The forest bears many scars of anthropogenic disruption, especially the fallen trees, so fragile and vulnerable seeming.  There is much to mourn, yet there is also so much to do in this time of precarity.  Reflecting this need for action are photographs of hands and earth at the moment of touch.