These pictures were made over the course of three years, in forests burned by the 2020 Glass Fire in Northern California. My aunt lives down the road from where the fire began, and though her house survived, the surrounding land was badly burned.

I began hiking through ghostly forests, and found myself humbled at being surrounded by so much devastation. I made pictures slowly at first, and then with urgency. The camera was my way to contend with the unraveling – a way to acknowledge loss and the sense of being lost.

During my hikes, I realized that most of the trees, though burned and scarred, were not dead. Beneath their charred exterior, the trees were eerily alive – somehow simultaneously dead and alive, inhabiting two states at the same time.