In The Poetics of Space, French philosopher Gaston Bachelard writes about the artist’s relationship to place and its influence on the creative process. Place as a metaphor for self has been a constant focal point of my work and Alice Wasn’t Lost, She…—comprised of four groupings of work (Communion, Permutation, Manifestation, and Transformation)—were made while on residencies between 2001 and 2004, and they were created entirely in-camera using a vintage Polaroid Land camera and 665N peel-apart B+W film. The aim of this process was to use the light and shadows in natural setting to create a series of evocative, multiple-exposure self-portraits in response to the places they were made.

​When writing about the natural world—the forest in particular—Bachelard refers to it as a “before me, before us” place, a place of history and grounding; and in many ways these images allow me to make a connection with the past.  Through them I am reaching back to a time when my ancestors viewed the natural world as a place that was both sacred and profane, a place that was filled with life, death and regenerative energy.  Bachelard writes of the “ancestral pull” of the forest and this work is my response to the expansive appeal of that pull. One could say that I am using the natural world as a mirror, allowing certain aspects of myself to push through, while others recede into the shadows.

​Many people enter the woods to lose themselves, to escape the world around them.  However, I think I enter natural spaces to find myself and better understand my place in the world.