I went to the wetlands in search of vanishing moments — a ripple on the water when a turtle feeds just below the surface, or a drift of fog disappearing with the rise of the sun. It was the autumn of 2025 and I was losing someone close to me. These images from that time are minimalist expressions of essence, absence, and mood.

Film director Guillermo del Toro once said, “Presence is fleeting; absence is eternal.” He was speaking about the passing of a loved one, but his observation relates as well to our subliminal experience of photographs. Places and people in the pictures we keep are both there and not there, reminding us of what endures in life as well as what we have lost. Absence becomes presence, as in grief. I find this paradox oddly comforting, maybe because loss puts us in touch with something beyond ourselves. I made this series in that spirit — as impressions of a natural world both vanishing and everlasting.

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