In situ explores the question: What does it mean to capture the essence of a place? In this series, I document the landscapes of the Pacific Northwest by positioning them as both subject and collaborator.

I take a pocket rangefinder with me on trips into the outdoors, collecting material from each site as I photograph. Then, I soak each exposed roll in a mixture emblematic of where it was shot. This always includes water in some form — for example, brackish estuary water or melted volcanic snow — but also organic objects like seaweed, beach grasses, shells, and ripe huckleberries.

Through this process, I relinquish some control to the natural elements; they alter the film’s emulsion and how it responds to photographic chemicals in novel ways. The resulting images are both document and artifact: records of place, but also wild co-creations with the environment itself.