Every summer, for a while now anyway, around my house we start to anticipate that wonderful day… sometime in August, when summer finally “breaks.” It doesn’t end—it still gets hot during the day—but there’s this special, intangible release from the dried, bony grip of the desert heat. You don’t know exactly when it’s going to happen, but you definitely know when it finally does.
In all honesty, this summer hasn’t broken yet. maybe tomorrow? maybe next week? it’ll happen, and when it does, I’ll feel that slight relief, like I’ve turned the last bend in a tunnel and can finally see light again.
This desert heat makes it near impossible to do much of anything outdoors during the day. And since my job is 100% remote now, I spend almost every day in the confines of my well-air-conditioned studio. The luxury of time and space can sometimes turn into a trap, of course. Especially when I realize I’ve spent the whole day by myself, staring at a screen… albeit a screen covered in my own artwork, rather than doom-scrolling through social media.
I’ve spent a good part of the past couple of years slowly but surely moving away from straight photography. Collage, and the side roads it opens up—cyanotypes, encaustic—have led me down a rabbit hole of found faces and anonymous antagonists in a kind of self-created history. All of it comes rolling out of my brain, takes form, gets trashed, re-photographed, reproduced, repurposed. sometimes many times over. I don’t know if it’s good or not. if I’m making IMPORTANT work, or if I’m just deluding myself. On good days, I just appreciate the ability and the space to create, mostly undisturbed. On bad days, the existential angst takes over, and I waver between “what’s the point?” and “there is no legacy for most of us, so why even give a fuck?”
Soon, the desert will start to cool, the days will grow shorter. The swamp cooler will be covered for the long winter, and maybe I’ll come back and read this again, and even laugh at the desert doldrums I’m wallowing in right now.
When will it break? When?