Tautology is a photography and poetry project that explores the dual nature of truth. The diverse desert landscapes of Utah can feel surreal even to those of us who spend a lot of time in them. For people who have never experienced them firsthand, it can seem an untruth that such places could exist at all. By placing a mirror in these landscapes, we see two simultaneous but opposing viewpoints of the same moment in time and space, both of which are equally real.

CITYHOME UNDERGROUND Solo Exhibition

The images were all made entirely in-camera, on-location, and are not digital compilations. I began the project the day before the pandemic shut down–March 15, 2020–and completed the work six months later. During that tumultuous time, the truth itself came under attack in the public consciousness, the very idea of it fractured as a single beam of light through a prism. Living in a very remote part of Southern Utah during this period, my lived experience felt so contradictory to what I was seeing in the media, that I began to think about reality no longer as fixed and unassailable, but rather as subjective, plural, and intimate. The suffering, panic and injustice were real, but so too weren’t the meadowlarks building nests by my front door? So too wasn’t the cloud shadow racing across the range?

The poem that accompanies the photo series was written as a way for me to make sense of these questions. Perhaps the words and images in Tautology will create a sense of questioning and openness in you, too. I hope that in some small way, the project encourages all of us to wonder if the world is really as unilateral as it may seem, and to become more willing to accept that our own experience may not be all the truth there is.