Photography is a referent medium. While a photograph is a physical object with its own ontology, the image depicted references a moment that has already ended. The mobility of a photograph relies on the divide between presence and absence, the material and the ephemeral. This photographic essay considers the tensions and parallels of such divides in photographing and photographs of sadhus , holy men who wander throughout East Asia. Sadhus relinquish worldly possessions in the name of spiritual pursuits, surviving on whatever the divine provides. The following images illustrate both their radiant spiritual presence, and the trace of a material boundedness.

This collection of photographs is an experiment in the somatic engagement of texts. Using a variety of media—brick, concrete, fabric, chalk, embroidery floss, mat board, paint, digital photography, and photo-editing software—we explored the thresholds between poetry and images. We wrote, cut, stitched, painted, arranged, and smeared these texts on and with our bodies. We searched for their material dimensions. Through this process we experienced the shape, texture, flow, throb, scratch, and prick of poetic expression in space.

Every Olive Tree in the Garden of Gethsemane is a suite of photographic images of each of the twenty-three olive trees in the garden. Situated at the foot of the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem, the Garden of Gethsemane is known to many as the site where Jesus and his disciples prayed the night before his crucifixion. The oldest trees in the garden date to 1092 and are recognized as some of the oldest olive trees in existence. The older trees are a living and symbolic connection to the distant past, while younger trees serve as a link to the future. The gnarled trunks seem written with the many conflicts that have been waged in an effort to control this most-contested city; a city constantly on the threshold of radical transformation.

Decision Altitude: Incident Report uses the medium of photography to examine the physical and psychological experience of skydiving. Images of falling skydivers are captured using a pin-hole camera and printed using a photo-etching process. The means of capture and output are selected to highlight the performative nature and physicality of photography. Thresholds of light, the body, space, and time are collapsed into the images as the physical limitation of gravity, the impermanence of the body and the medium of photography are explored.

This collection of photographs was taken in “The Gateway to Giant City State Park.” Each photo is entitled with lines from poets including George Oppen, Robert Frost, Minne Bruce Pratt, Margaret Atwood, and Carolyn Forché.