Reflective Detachment, 2021

After a lifetime of discord within the family, my father and I returned to a mountain range that we’d been to twice before. My brother had already cut my father off at this point, and I was on the precipice of doing the same. We left a member short (the summer following my freshman year in college), venturing further than past years into the range. Looking at my father as we hoisted our packs, I made the decision to try and view him fully, the idealized, flawed, man that first put a camera in my hands. Ironically, the dissociative capacity of both the camera and my childhood came from him, and I honestly can’t thank him enough.