He Who is infinitely above us, infinitely different from ourselves, infinitely
“other” from us, nevertheless dwells in our souls, watches over every movement
of our life with as much love as if we were His own self.

——————————Thomas Merton

 

MY CHILDHOOD HOME bordered a vast forest in the rural Midwest, our backyard seamlessly blending into a wilderness that stretched over a million acres to the north. Our dirt road had no streetlamps, and on cloudy nights with a waning moon, the darkness was inky black. We seemed to live on the edge of oblivion.

At times, our conversations felt equally dark. At home, church, and in our community, the language of heaven and hell was heard often, and images of suffering and separation loomed large in my young mind. A painting prominently displayed in my grandparents’ nearby home cemented the seriousness of it all: Textured brushstrokes depicted a cruciform bridge stretching across a bottomless chasm between two contrasting territories, one of fire and shadow, the other a lush landscape awash in light. These stories were all I knew. There was no other way of seeing than this.

Ambient fear gave rise to an unrelenting need for assurance. The idea that I could know my spiritual position with certainty was alluring but elusive. There seemed to be no space between the darkness and the light, no middle ground on which to stand. I knew nothing then about the many shades within and between these opposing worlds, and I ached for a new way of seeing and being.

There is, in fact, much to be found in the in-between. I knew this before I knew how to express it. That intuition came to me on many nights as I ran home from my best friend’s house in thick darkness on the forest path, hearing only the crunch of twigs and leaves underfoot and my own heavy breathing. With no flashlight, I learned to find the way not by looking down or ahead, but up. The narrow path left just enough of a break in the tree canopy above to reveal a slightly brighter darkness, a shade of black different enough to guide me home. By attending to the unseen, I was able to see more clearly: A path was revealed through the contours of unknowing.

In the years that followed, I continued to wrestle with how to see and be in the world. Nearly a decade of chasing after certainty left me in the crushing grip of addiction. The only way out was to set aside the very stories that afforded me the closest thing to assurance I knew, and to assume a kind of necessary blindness. It was fearsome and liberating all at once. I entered a season of unknowing, hoping I might find a new story, one that might offer a clarity greater than certainty.

This newfound freedom allowed me to reconsider long-held interests. I was captured immediately by the practice of making photographs. This simple tool, a digital camera at first, then film, opened up ways to see the world anew. Photographs became a way to encounter myself, God, and others-not just an exploration of story, but a contending with belief itself.

I would wander wander the country, through forests, deserts, and coastlines, with camera in hand, my chest tight with anticipation. Photographing the world around me became a way to exorcise certainty and come into contact with unknowing. The images I created were like veils, obscuring and revealing all at once. Photography became a way of naming without words, of perceiving the shadows stretched between darkness and light.

The very thinness of the images began to represent something profound to me. Thin in materiality but thick with meaning, certain photographs seemed to open a door for the sacred to invade the ordinary. An interlocutor of sorts, a photograph could draw together meaning and matter, immanence and transcendence.