My current project develops these questions through a portrait of Camp Hill, Alabama, created in connection with the RED DIRT BIENNALE.
Rather than approaching Camp Hill as a place to simply photograph, I am interested in understanding the town as a living portrait shaped by its people, land, objects, memories, histories, and everyday life.
The project begins with listening.
Through conversations with residents, elders, families, farmers, community leaders, churches, and others connected to Camp Hill, I am asking what the town remembers, what has disappeared, what continues to endure, and what residents themselves believe should be carried forward.
The portrait will extend beyond photographs of people. I am interested in family photographs, personal possessions, buildings, farm tools, landscape, red soil, abandoned and active spaces, oral histories, and other objects that carry relationships to the town. These encounters may eventually take the form of photography, photo transfers, found and locally connected materials, installation, and sound.
A central question guiding the project is:
How can a portrait of Camp Hill hold land, memory, history, and community without reducing the town to a single story?
Camp Hill has histories of labour, agriculture, faith, education, racial struggle, community organising, loss, and resilience. But I do not want to make a portrait that understands the town only through hardship or the past. I am equally interested in ordinary life, humour, family, pride, creativity, relationships, and the possibilities residents imagine for its future.
The work therefore asks not only “What was Camp Hill?” but also “What is Camp Hill now, what does it remember, and what does it hope to become?”
Ultimately, I hope to create a portrait that does not simply look at Camp Hill from the outside, but emerges through sustained listening and collaboration — a portrait in which photographs, objects, land, and voices become vessels through which the town can remember itself.