This winter marks ten years since I first picked up my camera for “Resilient”, a series that came to define me in a myriad of unexpected ways and truly redefined how I see myself as an artist. Ten years is easily the longest time I’ve ever developed a body of work over, and during that decade, this series matured, morphed, and evolved along with me. Originally started as a project to “see differently”, capturing abstracted and minimalist landscapes, this project encouraged me to get out in the winter rather than hanging up my camera for the long winter months. What it became never ceases to surprise me, though.

To provide some context, this is the first image I shot for this project, way back in December 2014:

“Resilient” provided me hours of isolation on Alaska’s lonely highways for personal reflection and deep thought. The regular pace of life as a husband, father, and educator provided little time to process my own thoughts and generational expectations encouraged me to bury my problems deep inside. I was deeply unhappy for a myriad of reasons, none of which I felt I had the power to resolve. I felt stuck with no possible path to obtain my goals; I was resentful, jealous, angry, and was suffocating – all at the same time – and I took it out on the place that I lived. Alaska, the first place that I truly was able to call home in my life as an army brat, became the stumbling block, the rock and the hard place, and my enemy. Winter, above all else, was a tangible representation of all I hated about Alaska; the cold hurts my skin, the temperatures can kill, and the lack of light will twist your mind.

Getting out those first few times to photograph for this as-of-yet-unnamed series was tough. I didn’t know why I was going out, but each time I came back with a few photographs that looked like nothing I’d ever photographed and my mind, after contemplating my troubles for a six to twelve-hour stint of driving, was surprisingly still. Soon enough, it wasn’t a challenge to convince myself of making another lonely winter drive to Valdez, Anchorage, Manley Hot Springs, Circle, or a variety of other non-exotic winter destinations. I slowly developed a concept around why I was photographing, hoping to reveal the subtle beauty in Alaska in its most harsh and life-threatening moments.

Soon enough, I traveled more during the winter than the summer it seemed. I sought out counseling to address issues that the lonely roads couldn’t. I started writing more and more about what these images meant to me via social media. I started speaking about the therapeutic effects of the project and how my compositions had started to embody my isolation, loneliness, and mental health difficulties. I eventually sought out medical assistance to finally get myself out of the rut I had found myself in, and from this new vantage point, I realized what the project had become.

From the first image shot, I had sought to organize natural chaos into an abstract, layered composition and reduce life through minimalism. Unable to find harmony and balance in my own life, I distilled my surroundings into organized, compressed, and balanced reductions all the while using the time between each shot as an opportunity to open up personal Pandora boxes and attempt, slowly, to put them in order as well. I reflected myself into the landscapes I shot while also finding that as I rebuilt who I was, I found myself photographing visual metaphors for the traits that I admired of those I loved and called family. Thus, “Resilient” came into being after years of calling this project by another name, as I found myself admiring above all else the resilience of our surroundings, returning to life each year no matter how dark, cold, or bitter the winter was. These landscapes inspired me and, finally, I fell back in love with the place I called home all because of this project. Perhaps the final revelation that this project had turned the corner and reached its final evolution was that my eye started capturing the vibrant color of winter, contrasting the stark, near-monochromatic compositions I started the series with. What I saw in winter, in Alaska, in my home, and in myself had all changed and were so much more wonderfully vibrant than they were a decade ago.

Here in January of 2025, I find myself reflecting on “Resilient” and wondering if it’s time for me to move on, close this chapter, and invest my creative energies more fully on the various other projects I have running. I’ve not shot a single image for this series in nearly ten months, although I no longer feel like I’m neglecting something because I have so much more going on. Winter is no longer dead creative time, as I currently find myself chipping away at two alternative process projects at the same time. Summer is now for travel excursions and passive art making through lumens. I also can say that I honestly have never loved myself as much as I do now, nor that my eyes have ever been as open and aware. I pursue my other passions in earnest, whether that’s reading, gaming, or exploration. I feel alive – and it’s because of the time I spent on this project.  I, of course, can’t talk about “Resilient” without giving so much credit to my lovely spouse for encouraging me to take that first shot, that second, third and fourth trip, and every shot, trip, and critique session she encouraged after those initial ones. Without her recognizing what I needed *years* before I did, I wouldn’t be as healthy as I am now. Perhaps I won’t close the book on “Resilient”, but maybe I’ll agree to leave a bookmark in it on those last few empty pages, always ready for me to come back if I need to. The adventure isn’t done, the passion isn’t gone, and the darkness still exists – but there is a harmony and balance to it all that I’ve established in myself because of this series. If I ever need to come back and recenter, it will be waiting for me.

In the decade I’ve spent shooting, this portfolio gallery represents the clearest intent behind a project I’ve ever had. 51 images featured, I’ve never assembled a series so large nor one so diverse yet strangely harmonious as well. While no venue I’ve shared this work in has been large enough to show this entire series, perhaps my next step, now that I feel confident in its maturation, is to start looking to publish this work as a book.  We’ll see.

See entire “Resilient” series here