Thoughts on Failure

In 2020, during the first year of the pandemic, I spent several months driving across the United States, reading John McPhee’s Annals of the Former World and taking photographs of road cuts and empty landscapes. I was lost. It felt like a time of transition, for me and the rest of the world.

Since then, I’ve had a hard time finding a home for these images. They’re pretty pictures, but they’re not terribly interesting or unique and they don’t tell a compelling story. For a while, I tried to photograph with McPhee’s book in mind, but I would become distracted, much preferring to hike through National Parks and explore old highways, to read at night and wake up surrounded by the natural world.

I only wanted to see the country, to be alone in the vastness, and to think about what the rest of my life might look like.

It’s difficult to talk about photographs like this—failures of intent or imagination, or just a series of images that looks absolutely fine, but never digs any deeper. In my career, I’ve often traded in these failures and missteps. It’s the only way to grow.

Anyway. One day, I’ll write a history of all these failures and I’ll climb to the top of my words, infinitely tall, and look out over the past and smile at everything I never accomplished, and think again about the future and what it might bring.