Views from Walden Woods: A Triptych

Artist’s Note

The images featured in this issue are from my series Transcendental Concord (Radius Books, 2018). The series is a visual interpretation of transcendentalism: a literary, philosophical, and social movement that developed from a community in Concord, Massachusetts. Through this project—which involved equal parts photographing, walking, and reading—I sought to pay homage to the transcendentalists and make images that reflect their philosophy. Over the course of a year, I explored the landscape that inspired them as well as where they lived and wrote.

While on these pilgrimages, I photographed specific places in Concord referenced in transcendentalist writings. I photographed simply, wandering on foot with a film camera. I photographed deliberately, with reverence toward the natural world, observing variations large and small in the environment. And I photographed experimentally, incorporating long exposures as well as camera movement from photographing while walking. Although I never expected to see exactly what the transcendentalists saw, I hoped to feel something of what they felt, searching the landscape for traces of history and a sense of interconnection.