DEVOTIONS

DEVOTIONS weaves homemade photochemistry, embodied Sufi practices, and my relationship to the Pando forest. Exploring analog photography as both method and metaphor for revelation, it reflects on material alchemy, ecological reverence, and deep time.

DEVOTIONS is an ongoing body of work that draws from several years of alternative photochemical research, the concepts of Oneness and 'spiritual listening' in Sufism, and my sustained engagement with the Pando aspen forest in Utah. Seemingly 47,000 individual trees, Pando is “a forest of One tree” interconnected by a single immense root system. Believed to be between 16,000 and 80,000 years old, it is the largest known organism on land, spanning 106 acres. 

In this project, Pando becomes both subject and metaphor: a living model of entanglement, multiplicity within unity, visible and invisible relationships, and nonlinear time. DEVOTIONS centers themes of cycles, revolutions, and circumambulations, including the orbit of the moon, moths encircling a light in the darkness, and a continuous image of Pando on a single roll of film. This project approaches the forest not only as a physical site, but as a mythic and cosmological place where ecological, mystical, and material forms of knowledge intersect.

The work is grounded in photochemical experiments. I hand-process film using a homemade coffee-based developer. The resulting images contain chemical irregularities, residues, and inscriptions on the emulsion of the film. Printing the photographs as negatives and inverting light to dark, I disrupt conventional modes of ecological representation and challenge expectations of photographic truth, clarity and control. 

Developing the film in my kitchen sink, I embrace the Sufi archetype of the Wise Fool—valuing humility, improvisation, and embodied knowledge over technical mastery. This becomes a devotional practice of attuning my attention to mystery, and inviting chance as a collaborator. I am drawn to how alchemy of the most mundane materials can evoke both the microscopic and the cosmic. In DEVOTIONS, photography becomes both inquiry and ritual: a way of listening for revelations and a reflection on material alchemy, ecological reverence, and deep time.