Trapped in Paradise
2021 was the worst year of my life.
(Worse than 2020 even.)
My wife was recovering from clinical depression. My mother-in-law evaporating to Alzheimer's Disease. And my children were withering, stuck at home part year, as the schools were still closed during the pandemic.
Mid-life is famously tough, but for Jessie and me, some of those days felt like actual torture.
I was 30 lbs overweight, unhealthy, and unhappy.
However, I live in a beautiful place; a horse farm in the village of Arroyo Hondo, just outside Taos, New Mexico.
And I love my wife and children more than anything on Earth.
During the Covid 19 pandemic, my family and I found ourselves enmeshed in deep misery, yet walking in circles around the gorgeous farm and adjoining dirt roads.
(Or driving aimlessly around photogenic Taos, with nowhere to go.)
I felt trapped in paradise, as even when vaccines became available, we still spent 2021 in a state of suspended animation, desperate to avoid getting my Mother-in-law sick.
Bonnie became less communicative each passing day, and was mentally gone by late May of that year. (She passed in December 2023.)
In order to stay sane, amidst the chaos, I made this photographic project, shooting pictures the entire year.
These images represent my world in Taos as I know it, having spent the majority of my adult life here.
They’re also chronological.
They record a state of mind, pulsing with energy: claustrophobic, anxious, vibrational.
The exceptions, the beautiful ones, break the tension and represent the joy of healing.
Like birds in a deep blue sky.
Those few times when I looked up, and felt free.