the Quiet Frame 

The underbelly of the Tower Drive bridge. Its a very lovely area.

the Hidden

I have an inexplicable attraction for spaces that exist just at the outskirts of society. Places where nature persists and infrastructure occupies. They invoke a feeling within me, a profound solitude that I cannot shake.

Dystopia.

It's compelling.

Not dystopia in the general sense. Often, a dystopia is the product of conflict. An intense oppression of humanity, led to the subversion of a peoples wellbeing. It is a term that carries an almost exclusively negative connotation.

The feeling I find myself chasing comes from a different kind of deprivation. An absence of humanity. Not upon the moral field; no, a physical absence of humanity. A teasing absence. A primal juxtaposition of motion, or the lack thereof.

Signs of life but no one in sight. The distant sounds of traffic as the streets reflect a ghost town. A home— disorganized and lived in, yet covered in dust. I hold a fascination with the places that are disconnected from reality. In a world of constant motion, we often miss the quiet stops along the way.

Let me take a moment to thank you.

Genuinely.

One of the many things taken for granted is time, and you have graciously given me a piece of yours.

An evening walk through downtown. I don’t look up enough around tall buildings.

I’ve spent my whole life in Wisconsin, excluding some family vacations. Sometimes I find myself aimlessly driving around, searching for these spaces. For two years I worked a delivery position— four times a week, I would cross state lines.

There were full months where I got to watch each and every sunrise. The rainstorms, the snowstorms, morning fog. For two years, I saw it all. I saw the skies change, as smoke from the wildfires clouded a week of august air. Every day our conditions change, and every day they hold beauty.

Farmland has really grown on me. When I was younger, I thought Wisconsin was boring. We have so much flat land, and there aren’t a ton of “pallet cleanser” views. I lacked context. Driving through the seasons brought me an appreciation for the in-betweens.

Choose to meander through the world and it will share its beauty.

I don’t know why I take pictures— I don’t know why I write. I don’t even know what drives me. I do know; however, a deep envy that plagues me. I want to live in the moment. To find myself so absorbed by the sight, that I forget to take the picture.

Often times, life is busy. In the modern age, everything and everyone is constantly at war for our attention. I’ve come to hate it. Maybe the world moves too fast for me, so instead of trying to keep up, I’ll let myself get lost in every moment.

I have never really shared my photography with the general public. I have never openly shared my writing. To be completely honest, this is well out of my comfort zone.

I want that to change.

Friends in cars on rides afar.

For me, winter carries a lovely, if not lonely beauty. Howling winds carry a thin dusting of snow— a light fog billowing over the wasteland of drifting dunes. The trees sag, heavy with the weight of a storm. Its utterly captivating.

Personally I disagree with cold weather, yet in these moments I forget about my discomfort. The same space we come to know, turned into a barren scape as the white blanket rolls in. Its awestriking. Once again, these are moments of absence. Manmade infrastructure, hidden by nature.

Often, I find myself falling to the comfort of stagnation. I reach a content plateau with life, and stop pushing forward. I lack the hunger to want more.

I have things I want to do, yet never take action to start. Starting is hard, and scary. At the start, we have nothing. No skills, no expertise, and no knowledge to lean on.

Starting is what allows us to gain a frame-of-reference. The very barrier that holds us back is the same point of reference that will allow us the satisfaction of our improvement.