This is my most deeply personal project. In all my interests and passions, one theme looms largest: my love for, and emotional resonance with, the natural world. Early in 2024, I found my mental health had reached rock bottom. In an effort to take back control of my life, I began walking. Before then, I had walked thousands of miles in countless countries across the globe, climbed mountains, braved monstrous storms, and camped in deserts.

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This time, I wanted to bring the joy and peace of mind walking has given me home. Paired with a practice of mindfulness, I walk daily, just in my local park — connecting with the seasons and observing slowly as the living world continually transitions. I have observed that with presence of mind and the right perspective, there is an infinite source of beauty and joy to be found at your doorstep.

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Each spring, the daffodil breaks through the sodden soil to adorn the world with its majesty. The verges, the parks, the knolls — all bathed in an ephemeral amarillo glow. We must learn to see the beauty in all seasons, however, for winter will soon be upon us again.

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Inspired, in the spring of 2025, I looked at the life around me and said, “I want to photograph the daffodils.” (Did you know there are 13 divisions of daffodil?) My walks had become an emotional salve, allowing me to recentre during difficult times simply by being present and pausing to observe the impermanent yet persistent beauty of life. Not only was my relationship to nature allowing me to heal, but I was also photojournaling my emotions.

 

Bringing flowers procured from the park into the studio, I style them through intuition, playing out my pains, my passions, my preoccupations. Some of these images are inspired by heartbreak; others are a meditation on the optimism of spring, and even exploring post-traumatic growth.

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In all of them, I aim to offer a perspective on life. There are certain universalities of the human experience: to suffer, to love, to envy, to admire, to inspire. By giving these flowers human character and emotion — yet removing the biases that human identity carries — we witness undeniable universal beauty: a reflection of the human condition, a deeper beauty that lives in all of us.

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I hope you see, as I do, that in the ways that matter, we are all the same. With the right perspective and presence of mind, the good is available to us all. Through our relationship with nature, our loved ones, and ourselves — accepting, noting, and watching the transient nature of our experience — we may be free not from suffering, but from the extra suffering we bring upon ourselves and others by being lost to thought. Return to the moment. Touch the grass.