Breakfast Table Bouquet / 12" x 18" / Archival Pigment Print / 2026
Late-day light poured through the dining room window and struck a bouquet of flowers. I was sitting at the table with my two-year-old son as he ate a snack. Most days, there are flowers on the table, usually from Farmstead Florals, sometimes from our home garden, and, on this day in late April, from Fudgetown Farms. They were selling memberships for their spring flower club at the Treehouse Gallery on Valentine’s Day. I didn’t have a gift yet for Carlyle, so I bought her a subscription that brought seasonal flowers into the house for seven weeks. The bouquet in this picture was one of the last ones we received.
Our dining room window overlooked a large magnolia tree. It created gaps in the sunlight that reached into the house as the branches swayed in the breeze. The flowers’ colors popped and faded and popped again. I was spellbound. “I’ll be right back,” I said with a tone my son could trust, before fetching my camera from the office. The light was still dancing across the cosmos, Bells-of-Ireland, and forget-me-nots when I returned to the dining room. Table flowers are important characters in our domestic story.
Cedar Elms, Autumn / 22" x 33" / Archival Pigment Print / 2026
Fall at Greenfield Farm brought relief from the summer heat. The walkway and routes through the woods became more manageable. Biting bugs dwindled. The lush foliage that dominated the landscape surrendered to the shorter days and cooling temperatures. The leaves of deciduous trees changed from green to red, orange, and yellow. The farm’s isolation created a brilliant quiet that locked me into the environment. I experienced the seasonal changes emotionally like a drama, like entertainment. I viewed the trees as characters. They were hushed spectators that kept watch over Greenfield Farm. They had dignity, and there were so many varieties, including southern sugar maple, river birch, ironwood, mockernut hickory, eastern redbud, flowering dogwood, white ash, eastern red cedar, sweetgum, tulip poplar, red mulberry, hop hornbeam, loblolly pine, sycamore, Mexican plum, black cherry, and red oak. At times, they made me stop my search for pictures, particularly when they were struck by delicate light.
Dirty Chandelier Prisms / 12" x 18" / Archival Pigment Print / 2014
Joseph Makkos rented a warehouse in the Bywater neighborhood to store 30,000 vintage New Orleans newspapers from 1888 to 1929. The collection once belonged to the British Library and survived the World War II bombings of London before landing with a collector in New Orleans. The newspapers were in danger of being lost or destroyed until the collector placed an ad on Craigslist offering them for free. Joseph responded and saved them. He was searching for ways to make the archive relevant to modern times and created NOLA DNA, a project that uses artificial intelligence to make the vast digital archive accessible.
I met Joseph eleven years earlier outside the airport in Innsbruck, Austria. We were waiting for a bus to take us to Castle Brunnenberg, a place where Ezra Pound once lived in the Italian Alps. There we spent the summer studying the poet’s works under the guidance of John Gery, who taught poetry at the University of New Orleans. Joseph and I studied together in Madrid the following summer and connected again in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Joseph fascinated me. I admired his enthusiasm and his thirst for the unknown. He was a scholar, poet, and Eagle Scout from Cleveland, Ohio. He had a wholesomeness that was rare in the circles we shared.
Joseph invited me to see the collection at the warehouse, which was also his living space. I could tell by the excitement in his voice that he believed these newspapers were going to change his life. I decided to interview him on camera about his hopes for their potential.
Before we began the interview, I inspected the warehouse, looking for backdrops and cutaway shots. I was mindful not to step on old books with titles like Useful Knots and How to Tie Them. The newspapers dominated the space. I found stacks and stacks of historical issues of the Daily Picayune and Times-Democrat in airtight, museum-style tubes that reached to the ceiling. Joseph had also collected all kinds of interesting artifacts that were scattered around. There were desks topped with rows of drawing compasses, letterpress printing blocks, and dirty chandelier prisms.
Dusk at the Hudson Wren Memorial Park in Wilson, Arkansas / 34" x 51" / Archival Pigment Print / 2023
Usually, I’d drive around Wilson and the surrounding area two or three times a day, looking for subjects. Sometimes, I needed a break but didn’t want to go to the little house provided by the residency. Often, I stopped at the Hudson Wren Memorial Park. That property was home to the former Wilson Trade School, which was constructed in 1925, a year after the original school building was burned to the ground by arsonists. Lee Wilson, the namesake of the town, vowed to build the new school out of “brick and hollow tile” so it could survive another fire. It was known as the Wilson Negro School until 1970, when it and Wilson High School both closed so that all the students in Mississippi County could attend the newly constructed Rivercrest High School. In 1976, the property was renamed Wilson Bicentennial Park, and it still has a monument and a few benches for visitors. I only saw people there three times during my sixty days in Wilson.
I loved the park because it had a particular quiet that fed my mind and helped me regroup. It also possessed a beauty that I wanted to capture. This photograph was taken in early June around dusk. I saw that the sun’s path to the earth was in line with a water oak on the edge of the park. I put the 400mm lens on my Canon, got down on my knees, and set the camera on the grass so that I could frame a bug’s-eye view of the pink-orange sun and oak tree. I loved the shades of purple in the sky and the greens that haunted the foreground.
Harry Grazes Before Spring Beauties / 16" x 24" / Archival Pigment Print / 2022
There is nothing like lying on the earth with dogs on an early April afternoon, for the air is cool, the bugs are few, and the spring beauties are in bloom.
Harry was twelve years old in this picture. His twin brother, Buddy, was nearby rolling around in the fresh grass. Harry is still with us and going on seventeen. He has slowed down but still gets around. We go on at least one walk a day, but his time of grazing on the spring grasses has been interrupted. He is terrified of our two-year-old son Luke and stays in the garage when Luke is playing in the yard, which is most of the day.
Buddy passed away in my arms last September on the way to Bottletree Animal Hospital. He was sick and suffering, and we were taking him there to be put down. I was happy he died swaddled in a soft blanket in the dark backseat of my car and not on the cold examination table under bright fluorescent lights. In many ways, Buddy was the leader of the two, and I wasn’t sure how Harry would handle the adjustment to being an only dog. That said, Harry was always jealous when Buddy got too much affection, which was impossible not to give him. While I believe Harry misses Buddy, I also think he has enjoyed this stretch of time where he is our only dog.
Ice Storm / 12" x 18" / Archival Pigment Print / 2026
I lived in an apartment at Cambridge Station during the 1994 ice storm in Oxford. There were no tree branches over my building, so I never experienced the constant booms of limbs crashing against my roof. Last year, many large trees towered above our house on Highway 30 during the ice storm that struck Oxford like a hurricane. We were among 24,000 Lafayette County residents who lost power during that long night when freezing rain snapped countless trees and toppled hundreds of power lines. It felt like we were trapped on a ship in a turbulent sea.
My wife feared that a tree or giant branch would crash through our house. In the wee hours, she dressed and wanted to leave for her parents’ house two doors down. It was pitch-black outside, save for the flashes of lightning. I argued that it was more dangerous to walk across the slippery yard with limbs falling in the freezing rain than it was to stay put. She never agreed, but she got back in bed with me and our baby, Luke, who slept through it all. The roof held strong.
The next day, we inspected the property and found that Carlyle’s studio sustained damage. Branches covered our roof, lawn, and driveway, making it difficult to leave. Limbs were still falling or dangling above the house. A day later, we drove across town to a friend’s condo that had electricity. We did not return home for over a month, waiting for power to come back to our neighborhood and for the tree-service folks to cut down the dangling branches so Luke could play safely in the yard.
In some ways, we are still recovering from the ice storm. As hard as it was, there were moments when I walked the yard while taking photos to send to our insurance agent and thought, “My God, this is so beautiful.”
Jimmy Hart Mural Behind Parking Lot Weeds / 22" x 33" / Archival Pigment Print / 2024
When I was a little boy, my older brothers often went to the National Guard Armory on West Pine Street in Hattiesburg to watch Gulf Coast Championship and Mid-South Wrestling matches between legends like The Junkyard Dog, Ted DiBiase, and my favorite at the time, the masked Mr. Wrestling II. Once, they came home screaming that my brother Jay had been “spit on by one of the Mongolian Twins.” According to my brother Danny, Jay tried to steal his “cheap-ass sunglasses.”
I have one memory of going to the armory with them to witness an event. My mother took us, holding my hand as we searched for a seat. I remember looking up at the screaming fans and spotting the gigantic wrestlers in the ring. I had been to football and basketball games but had never been in an atmosphere like this. It made me feel like I was on a carnival ride. I was equally excited and terrified. The room seemed alive.
Wrestling remained a part of my life through the 1980s, when I still believed it was all real. I have vivid memories of hating Jimmy Hart. He was the flamboyant, antagonistic manager for villains like King Kong Bundy, Ravishing Rick Rude, and The Honky Tonk Man. He was brought into Memphis Wrestling by his high school friend Jerry “The King” Lawler and was involved in the famous matches between Lawler and comedian Andy Kaufman. Hart was given the popular “Mouth of the South” nickname by media mogul Ted Turner.
Hart was born in Jackson, Mississippi, and later became a vocalist for The Gentrys, a Memphis band that was signed to Stax Records. The Bay City Rollers covered their 1965 song “Keep On Dancing” in 1971. It sold over a million copies and reached Number 4 on the Billboard Hot 100. I wager Hart is the only person inducted into both the Memphis Music Hall of Fame (2024) and the World Wrestling Entertainment Hall of Fame (2005).
This mural was painted on the back of the Art Center in Memphis by Birdcap and Upper Hand Art, aka Brian Butler.
Kitchen Window Horse / 16" x 24" / Archival Pigment Print / 2026
Carlyle loved horses at first sight and was given this toy horse when she was a little girl. Thirteen years ago, she traded a painting for a newborn foal and was present for the delivery in Mentone, Alabama. She named the filly Posy and boarded her at a stable near our house. Posy had a rich brown coat and white patches down her nose and just above two of her hooves. She looked so much like this figurine made by Breyer that Carlyle saw the toy horse as a prophetic promise and set it on the window ledge above the kitchen sink. This was years before we married and I moved into the house.
On this day in late March, Luke and I were in the backyard. I took pictures of him watching the sun slowly set. Orange light touched his face and made his blond hair glow. I corralled him inside, but he remained at the back door, looking through the glass at the sun. I walked into the kitchen and saw the light pouring like water through the window above the sink. Magnolia limbs fractured the gold light and gave the horse a brown silhouette.
Light and Leaves on Spider Web / 12" x 18" / Archival Pigment Print / 2025
I encountered little wildlife at Greenfield Farm. There were many birds on the property. I heard them chirping but rarely noticed them flying overhead or hopping around the trees. I saw tracks and droppings but never spotted an armadillo or a deer. I never even came across a snake. I read in the Landscape Report that the property was part of a bear’s territory. I was pleased never to come face to face with one. I did lock eyes many times with a black vulture that lived in the old corn crib. We studied and frightened each other. As time went on, I became fond of the bird, partly believing it was the reincarnation of William Faulkner, who said in a 1956 interview with The Paris Review, “If I were reincarnated, I’d want to come back a buzzard. Nothing hates him or envies him or wants him or needs him. He is never bothered or in danger, and he can eat anything.”
I did encounter bugs, especially mosquitoes, gnats, and horseflies during the warmer months. I feared them more than the heat, so I never wore shorts or short-sleeved shirts, not even in late July. The winged insects made the property a rich hunting ground for spiders. While I did stumble upon spiders, I observed many more cobwebs, mostly by walking face-first into them. I marveled at the webs that caught my eye. The dew-covered ones in the morning were as beautiful as the rectangular tapestries—like this one—that absorbed late daylight. I found this abandoned web between a woodland edge and the farmhouse.
No (Smoking!) / 16" x 24" / Archival Pigment Print / 2023
A farmer wrote a red “No Smoking!” warning on a yellow cotton bale in Wilson, Arkansas. Many bales had either this or a “No Burning” warning written across the wrap or the exposed ends of the flammable crop.
I was able to ride in the cab of a giant green John Deere cotton picker that stripped the cotton and wrapped it in yellow or pink plastic that protected the crop in the field until it was transported to the gin. Each bale weighed up to 5,000 pounds. The operator told me that the machine did the work of twelve people.
I had never spent time with cotton before the residency. When I arrived in May, the fields were still mostly dirt. In June, rows of little green plants sprouted out of the soil. By July, the crops had bloomed into lush, round rows that reached across the land like giant arms. Creamy flowers began to open. By late September, the fields were white with the fluffy cotton. In October, the first fields were harvested. By November, tractors dominated the land, picking cotton and leaving bales in the fields. The crops were later transported by truck to the gin. Once there, the stacked bales waited to meet machines that swallowed them whole. Their churning gears separated seed, lint, and trash. Outside the gin, the exhausted fields prepared to sleep through winter.
Palms Behind a Porch Screen / 12" x 18" / Archival Pigment Print / 2026
My great-grandfather’s name was Danny Pittman. He grew up on a family farm in the Dexter community of Tylertown. He had a talent for math and was sent to college in Bowling Green, Kentucky around 1905. There, he met Adrian Neal. They fell in love and journeyed to her hometown of Sulphur Wells, a town named for an artesian well that was discovered in 1845 by Ezekiel Neal, Adrian’s grandfather. Though Danny did not know it at the time, she was eight years older and had a previous beau who was the clerk at the court that issued marriage licenses. He refused to give them one. Danny went home to Mississippi and told his brother Alcus about the rejection. Alcus then traveled to Kentucky with my great-grandfather, set a pistol on the clerk’s desk, and said, “You will give my brother a marriage license.” The clerk did what Alcus demanded, and Danny and Adrian married. They moved to the family farm in south Mississippi. Adrian missed the rolling hills and hardwoods of Kentucky. The pine trees made her lonesome, so Danny replanted their lawn with oaks and other hardwoods. This was about 117 years ago.
I visited this house on the way to my Aunt Janette’s funeral in early September. My mother, Carlyle, Luke, and I inspected the colossal oaks. Beyond them, the house seemed to be in ruins. The yard hadn’t been mowed in years. Tall grasses and weeds reached my hips. We waded through them and reached the narrow concrete path that led to the front steps of the once-beautiful house. A drizzle began to fall. A shower was minutes away. We stepped onto the porch and peeked through the windows. My mother was telling stories about being a little girl at the house when I saw palm leaves planted long ago. One was green and looked like a hand with stretched fingers. The other was brown. Its leaves drooped down like a clenched fist. Both were distorted by the thin, black porch screen.
Six generations of my family have lived and continue to live on this land. Aunt Janette’s daughter, granddaughter, and great-grandson are among them.
Pink Flag, Random Oak, and Sweet Gum / 16" x 24" / Archival Pigment Print / 2025
William Faulkner owned land between Oxford and New Albany that he named Greenfield Farm. Since 1969, its structures have been left to ruin. The Mississippi Lab, a project overseen by John T. Edge and Mary Wise Conaway, is transforming the property into the Greenfield Farm Writers Residency. John T. had seen my field work from Wilson, Arkansas, and asked me if I would be interested in documenting the farm in its current state. In December 2024, I scouted the farm. I wanted to know what it felt like to be there alone. I liked the pictures I took and the idea of focusing on a place through the four seasons. Soon after, The Mississippi Lab offered me the opportunity to document the landscape, existing structures, and artifacts of Faulkner’s old mule farm before it becomes the residency.
We agreed that I would visit the farm at least four times each season: at dawn, in the afternoon, at dusk, and during striking weather, such as after a snowstorm. Because I live near Greenfield Farm, I was able to visit it thirty times in 2025. During that time, I came to think of the birds, bugs, spiders, flowers, plants, trees, and even the light as unique subjects that deserved my devotion. I captured them and what remained of Faulkner’s farm in a tender window of time. I felt lucky to get to know a place that was about to become another place. It made my time matter and informed how I viewed my work.
During my first scout, I noticed a survey flag tied to a stake that read “Cabin 2.” By March 2025, dozens of white and pink flags had been tied to trees, marking which ones to retain and which to thin out. Some will have to go to make space for four writing studios, a gathering shed, and a residency manager’s house. The Mississippi Lab hired Native Habitats of Flora, Mississippi, to develop a landscape plan that will honor the wild state of the property. I look forward to seeing how they and Marlon Blackwell Architects balance and blend new construction and the current landscape.
Pool Pollen / 12" x 18" / Archival Pigment Print / 2025
I grew up in the heart of the Pine Belt, and pollen blankets Forrest County in the spring. The male cones of pine trees discharge billions of pollen grains. Those grains have air-filled bladders that make flight possible. The wind carries the living particles away. Some find female cones that are waiting to be fertilized. Most of the pollen falls on grass, cars, sidewalks, birdhouses, outdoor benches, ponds, and swimming pools—practically everything. Growing up, I often regretted not taking my jambox and stack of CDs off the table on the porch.
We visited Hattiesburg last March. Luke’s babysitters were college girls, so their spring break became ours. We decided to go where we had help and visited Carlyle’s parents in Canton, and my mother for four days each.
One day during our trip, I walked outside my mother’s house a little after noon. I thought about sitting in one of the chairs on the porch, but it was coated with pollen. I continued to the swimming pool and watched the currents carry the yellow dust into a swirl that resembled the curvy veins in marble.
Reflections on a Pond / 16" x 24" / Archival Pigment Print / 2023
“What’s your favorite color?” Carlyle asked. This was years ago, when we were first dating.
“Light on Water.” At the time I was studying The Cantos by Ezra Pound and was bewildered by lines like, “There is a wine-red glow in the shallows, a tin flash in the sun-dazzle.” I was in Venice, Italy when I first encountered these words, and they guided my gaze to the watery reflections atop the canals. Since then, I have kept an eye downward to see how waves and currents distort forms and colors above the water’s surface.
The subject of this photograph was the pond behind Sam and Mary Haskell’s house in Oxford. I was scouting their property for a potential feature in Oxford Magazine. One thing I enjoy about jobs like this is knowing that at some point, I will have a moment to look around and shoot something the magazine would never use. After photographing the exterior of the stately Georgian Colonial Revival, I made my way to the pond that reached a woodland edge. I stood under a hardwood and pine canopy. The brown water reflected the blue sky and a brilliant mix of red, gold, and green leaves. A floating fountain near the middle of the pond created ripples that reached the shore and shook the colors below me.
Rolls of Vintage, Athletic Wallpaper / 12" x 18" / Archival Pigment Print / 2014
Joseph Makkos stored over a thousand rolls of vintage wallpaper in the warehouse where he worked and lived. I was there filming my second interview with him about his collection of over 30,000 vintage New Orleans newspapers that he hoped to bring back to life. He saved the newspapers by finding an ad on Craigslist. “It’s been less of me trying to go out and find this stuff. I just think it’s whispering to me in a way. I know it sounds strange, but it’s kinda telling me to get it. That may be some kind of psychological condition someone might say that I have, that I’m some sort of hoarder, but I look at myself more like I’m rescuing this from a dumpster.”
The wallpaper came to Joseph in a similar manner. He picked up a roll that had thick flocking and told me, “We got the wallpaper for free from a guy who was going to throw it in a dumpster.” He felt the paper and said, “I know it sounds crazy, but if you really took the time to take a look at some of this stuff… the patterns and textures, the beauty. If you were shooting a film and wanted us to build a room, we could take you back to the ‘70s or ‘60s.”
I liked the way the rolls of track-and-field-themed wallpaper looked side by side. The legs on the top roll lined up with the torsos on the bottom roll. As I took this picture, I thought, “Joseph is right. They don’t make stuff like this anymore.”
Shaded Cosmos and Zinnias / 22" x 33" / Archival Pigment Print / 2023
Five summers ago, Carlyle met a group of horseback riders on a Wednesday morning for a lesson at Point Pleasant Farm in Holly Springs. She came home and raved about a pasture that had been seeded with wildflowers and was in bloom. She insisted, “You need to see it.”
We were three months away from our first exhibition together at Southside Gallery, which we called Murmurations. The work in that show was based on the spaces we shared. My photographs came from a real-time experience of those places, while Carlyle’s work came from studies of vegetation that we carried home or later reflections on a landscape. She wanted to make a painting based on the horse farm’s wildflower pasture, so I went to Holly Springs with her and my camera the following Wednesday in hopes of capturing something for our upcoming show.
It was a hot August day, and the only other rider to show up for the lesson was Julie Chadwick. I followed them and trainer Robyn Miller to the wildflower pasture. Because they were on horseback, they soon left for the cooler trails that cut through the farm. Alone with the bugs and the quiet, I was amazed by the sea of cosmos and zinnias. I made four laps around the growth, each time getting lower and deeper into the field. The last photos I took were so close—what I call a “bug’s-eye view"—that the foreground became highly abstracted, creating pure blobs of color that reminded me of the silhouetted shapes in Carlyle’s paintings. It was a breakthrough in how I photograph nature.
Shattered Press Box Window / 16" x 24" / Archival Pigment Print / 2023
In 2023, the Dixon Gallery and Gardens chose me, along with painters Danny Broadway and John Ruskey, to be inaugural Fellows for a Residency in Wilson, a farming town in the Arkansas Delta. We were to live there for sixty days between May and January to create work—which for me meant photographing Wilson, its people, and the surrounding area.
This image was taken in the middle of May, on my fourth day there. I drove around the town, looking for subjects. One of them was a former football field across a busy train track, wedged between cotton fields and the old high school gymnasium.
I was surprised to see that the press box’s windows were shattered. I imagined kids causing the damage with a hammer. Inside, there were empty water bottles, a filthy mattress, a cardboard box of dirty stuffed animals, and a single red “J” spray-painted on a wall. It was spooky, even in the daytime.
Outside, I was much more comfortable. From the bleachers, I watched the sunset throw rich oranges against the low clouds. I turned around and saw that dusky color moving across the fractured glass. The hole allowed me to see through the window on the opposite wall. Beyond it were the sky and the gymnasium. I thought of the billboard that Warren Oates’ character was painting in Terrence Malick’s Badlands. A square of the billboard was missing, and the sky was visible through it.
Summer Pasture / 34" x 51" / Archival Pigment Print / 2023
I go to Holly Springs every year to give Carlyle’s horse a carrot. This gesture comes with a bonus for me in the summer and fall, for I can walk down to the wildflower pasture to see how the seasons are changing its shape and color.
Sometimes it makes sense to squeeze in this visit on the way to or from Memphis, where I go many times a year to pick up photographs from Memphis Professional Imaging and take them to David’s Frames and Art. On my way home one day, I reached Point Pleasant Farm around 5:00 p.m. There was strong orange light on part of the pasture and shade on the rest. I began taking pictures. The images from those two areas looked like they were from different dimensions. The flowers in the sun were hot and popped. The ones in the shade were cooler and almost pastel. I stood there in the shaded area with a sea of flowers between me and the trees that separated the fields.
I was pleased to see Edgar Hernandez at the farm. He had seeded the field and was roaming the property with a pack of dogs that he was training. He stopped to see what I was doing, and while we spoke, the dogs dove into the flowers and rested. They panted and smiled, happy as children at a playground. The farm is a great place to be a dog.
Sweet Gum and Horse Brier / 16" x 24" / Archival Pigment Print / 2025
I had an exhibition earlier this year at the University Museum called Unvanquished Soil: A Year at Greenfield Farm. Choosing twenty-four photographs to exhibit from the thousands I had taken was a process. John T. Edge, Mary Wise Conaway, Melanie Antonelli, and I agreed that the show would be ordered by the seasons. We met at the museum several times in February and argued for the photographs we wanted on the walls. We each won and lost some of these battles. The give-and-take worked wonderfully. In the end, we assembled a show that balanced color and texture as well as documentary and poetic images.
I did not want Sweet Gum and Horse Brier to represent fall foliage in the exhibition. I thought Cedar Elms, Autumn, which is in this show, was superior. Melanie, who considered my choices ninety-nine percent of the time, shook her head and said, “No.” She championed this image. John T. and Mary agreed, and usually a photo with three votes for or against ended the discussion. But I kept fighting for the one with the yellow leaves and blue sky at every meeting. I am sure it was irritating. Finally, Melanie shook her head and pointed to Sweet Gum and Horse Brier. “When I look at this picture, I think of you and Carlyle. I mean, it is you. It’s in the show.” John T. and Mary agreed again, and I let it go. A month later, I stood in the gallery and was grateful this image and several others I had lobbied against were in the show.
That was my first solo exhibition and my first opportunity to write captions for the photographs. Carlyle and I felt they added something unique to the experience, and she thought it would be interesting to have them beside the photographs in this show. I was a writer before I picked up a camera. These captions are a way to bring words and stories into the gallery space. They also connect to Reflections, the title of our show.
Carlyle and I also wanted a few murmurations in this show. She was interested in making paintings in conversation with my fall foliage photographs from Greenfield Farm, so I left several test prints in her studio. She made two paintings in response to the oak, elm, and sweet gum leaves that were brown, yellow, red, and green. Carlyle thought there was time to create one more. She grabbed a test print for Sweet Gum and Horse Brier and said, “I’m intrigued by this dark bluish-grey background. Is this in the show?”
I said, “No.” She was disappointed.
For the second time in a year, this photograph made it into a gallery show without my vote. Again, I am grateful it’s here.
Tumbledown Farmhouse / 22" x 33" / Archival Pigment Print / 2025
The farmhouse was the main character at Greenfield Farm. A visit to the property did not count unless I made at least one lap around the abandoned dwelling. I would sometimes ease through the front door or a window to explore. Most of the time, I entered through the back of the building, which had toppled long ago. As I walked through the ruins, remnants of the house’s ongoing collapse dangled overhead. There was always the chance I would fall through what remained of the floor, or that the roof would fall on me. Still, the crumbling structure was bathed in a strange beauty that felt inviting.
Inside, I found shreds of floral wallpaper and shattered glass. Where the floors had caved in, I encountered beds of leaves, returning grasses, and rusted nails sticking through boards that had fallen from the walls and ceiling. There were two fireplaces in the farmhouse. Both were made of Mississippi clay bricks and built into walls once covered in brilliant blue paint. One warmed what was likely the den, and the other heated the bedroom adjacent to the front door. They seemed to hold up what remained of the structure. The farmhouse’s distorted state created slopes that slid into each other. At times, it seemed to be in motion—like a ship on rough waters.
Unique Treasures / 12" x 18" / Archival Pigment Print / 2023
Carlyle and I went on a ski trip in 2022 to Deer Valley, Utah. The driver who took us down the mountain to the airport in Salt Lake City was from Philadelphia. We told him it was a city neither of us had visited but both of us wanted to see. This sparked his memory, and the names of sights to see, things to do, and great restaurants poured out of his mouth. Carlyle typed the list into her phone.
The next year, we visited Philadelphia and used the driver’s list as our guide. We fell in love with the city and spent about a month there across 2023 and 2024. Places like the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Barnes Foundation, and nearby Longwood Gardens fed our minds. The food was fantastic, and I was lucky to have a few solo excursions in search of the best Philly cheesesteak. I love being a tourist.
One day during our trip, we took a taxi from our hotel on Rittenhouse Square to the U.S. Mint. We inspected the artifacts, such as the 1792 coining press and the taxidermized 18th-century bald eagle that served as the muse for American coins. After observing the current coin-making operation, we began an adventure on foot to find the Curtis Building, which housed a work of art that had intrigued Carlyle. Along the way, we passed the Liberty Bell, Independence Hall, and Benjamin Franklin’s grave. We eventually found the Curtis Building. Inside, we admired The Dream Garden, a 15-by-49-foot mosaic composed of over one hundred thousand colorful glass tesserae. It dominated the lobby and was created by Maxfield Parrish and Louis Comfort Tiffany.
The curious storefront in this photograph was a block from the Curtis Building. Its colors and figures suggest an unusual conversation—especially set in the reflection of the buildings across the street. Objects collide with architecture to create a compressed landscape.
Daffodils Return to Greenfield Farm / 22" x 33" / Archival Pigment Print / 2025
I searched Greenfield Farm for subjects in 2025. One thing I hoped to find on every visit was a surprise. I was surprised and pleased to come upon these daffodils in late February. They added color to the landscape, and I wondered who planted them. I later learned the gardener likely came from one of four families.
From 1875 to 1969, the farm changed hands three times. F.C. Parks was the first to own it. He built the farmhouse in the late 19th or early 20th century. G.H. Cannon bought the property from the Parks family in 1919 but later lost it to foreclosure. William Faulkner acquired the 362.5 acres of farmland in 1938 after selling the rights to The Unvanquished to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer for $25,000.
Two people managed the farm for Faulkner. One was his brother John, known to the family as Johncy, who lived in the farmhouse for two years with his wife, Dolly, and their sons, Jimmy and Chooky. They made renovations and repairs to the house but moved back to town in 1940. Around 1946, William Faulkner chose Arenza “Renzi” McJunkins to manage Greenfield Farm. Renzi was born on the property in 1911 and only left it to fight in World War II. He lived in the farmhouse, often sharing it with his brother George’s widow, Bertha, and her son Tommy. Renzi lived there until his death in December 1969. No one ever lived in the house again.
We may never know who planted the daffodils that surrounded the farmhouse, but the presence of the Parks, Cannon, Faulkner, and McJunkins families became important to me during my year at Greenfield Farm. The flowers belong to a variety native to England’s Lake District, where William Wordsworth lived when he wrote the poem “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud,” which closes with these words: “And then my heart with pleasure fills, / And dances with the daffodils.”