Much of the landscape of daily life still looks familiar: we go to work, pay the bills, and wonder what’s for dinner. But something has been altered on a fundamental level: rights and people are disappearing, protections civil and environmental are being slashed, journalists are being jailed. We are experiencing something that once felt distant or speculative, a story from another time or place. We stand in the place we call home and ask, “Is this real?” It is, so other questions soon follow: “Should we stay? How could we possibly leave? What’s going to happen next? And when? And where? What should we do to prepare?” There aren’t a lot of answers.

once upon a time and the time is now is a series of black-and-white photographs that explores this experience through images of everyday nature: fields, trees, branches, birds, horizons, and sky. The places pictured in these photographs aren't backdrops. The land carries history, is registering the current reality, and will be impacted by what's to come. Many of the images in this series have been toned with a wash of burnt sienna. The color was chosen because it evokes the visual language of sepia and the archive, while also referencing the hues of forest fire season in the Pacific Northwest. It is used to communicate the importance of memory, and to mark the urgency of the present moment.

While this work is about the fear, grief, anger and uncertainty of this time and place, it is not about despair. These images are born of a steady insistence on the importance of seeing, of paying attention. It is a fundamental part of both resistance and resilience: we keep seeing the truth of what’s happening, we keep seeing one another, and we keep seeing possibility. We see, and we remember. once upon a time and the time is now is about the tender practice of persisting—of moving forward without knowing where we're going or how the story ends.