Promised Land/Visible Walls/Invisible Walls

About this work

The allure of a promised land resonates deeply within the human story, drawing travelers in search of adventure, the ill in search of healing, and immigrants in search of refuge, opportunity, and a better life. Landscape photography and cyanotype often participates in this myth, idealizing its subject by using aesthetics to emphasize harmony and sublimity while overlooking ecological or social realities.

While traveling, I was placed on a seven-day Covid quarantine in Berlin, and I found myself confined to a small hotel room without air conditioning. With little food, no medication, and a skyrocketing heart rate in the scorching summer heat, the hardest part was the lack of movement, isolation, and forced separation. Photographing to break the monotony, I had a strange feeling of being "there but not there." It was a stark reminder of how isolation, in any form, can make you feel invisible and vulnerable, whether it is quarantine, deportation, or the walls society builds around those it deems "other."

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