In the summer of 2026 I wandered into the Bear Lakes Basin of the High Sierra Mountains. A remote, trackless basin deep in the John Muir Wilderness. I spent 10 days alone carrying my Hasselblad, 2 lenses, 30 rolls of film, a down blanket, and no connected electronics. My aim was to photographically explore a single Sierra location for a length of time. To explore the themes that draw me deeply to these mountains; wilderness, open wandering, art, disconnection, and rich solitude.
I’ve been creatively exploring the Sierra Mountains for over half my life and it can beg the question, why go back to the same geography year after year? I go back in part because discovery is never complete. Discovery of place and of self. And this time, staying in one isolated location presented me an idea inspired from my favorite writer, Henry Thoreau and his observational dedication to a small pond in New England. To know one place is to know the world. It’s to honor the intangible spiritual pull of a place and what it means to slow down, observe, and create something out of that stillness.
This was my own artist in residence, but I didn’t anticipate that my camera would break on day 4. These 13 final images are what I was able to capture, they are not presented in chronological order, for I had chronological order.
