Root Rot

Root Rot is a photographic project that examines the daily practice of living with OCD and agoraphobia through the external landscape. Rather than documenting place, this work uses visual language to process internal states and introspection.

Root Rot is a photographic project that examines the daily practice of living with anxiety, OCD, and agoraphobia through the landscape of rural Vermont. Rather than documenting place, this work uses fog, darkness, windows, and light as a visual language for internal states that resist easy articulation.

The photographs map small acts of showing up, both the literal practice of stepping outside despite fear and the quieter forms of witness that happen from behind glass. Shot across seasons and times of day, the work holds space for the tension between the desire to retreat and the pull toward participation.

The title Root Rot references the silent decay that happens beneath the surface, invisible until it's already taken hold. It speaks to the ways mental illness can feel both deeply rooted and fundamentally unstable, how something can be simultaneously part of you and working against you. These images document both small rebellions against fear and honest acknowledgments of its cost, suggesting that presence itself can be an act of resistance when your mind tells you to disappear.

The photographs focus on transience: seasons changing, breath exhaling, bodies moving, light filtering and fading. They move between documentary observation and something more atmospheric. This reflects living with anxiety and agoraphobia, the constant negotiation between retreating and participating, between the world's enormity and the controlled smallness of home.

This is photography as exposure therapy, as evidence of persistence. Each image says: I was here. I looked. I witnessed this moment of light and time. Despite the difficulty of leaving, I went to river. I walked into the field. I saw the morning mist. These are small acts of resistance against fear, quiet assertions that the world is worth encountering.

Sometimes enduring the tension between inside and outside, between witnessing and seeking safety, is enough. The photographs prove both matter: going and staying, the threshold and what's on either side, and the ways we bridge the two.