New Photos: Missing Hope

This set of photographs is actually among the first expressive projects I attempted. Hardly new. But also one of the few that remained in my gallery.

In this series of photographs, I’ve attempted to follow a missing person along their last day of hope. We meet the man in the photographs after having spent some time missing. It is unclear where he is and because it’s unimportant how got there, I intentionally omitted any record of it.

He has clearly struggled to survive as long as he has, and hope is waning. As his condition worsens, hope begins to fade and the rest is left to our own speculation.

In this short, old series, I wanted to say something about the nature and importance of hope. Although now I’m uncertain of what exactly motivated my desire.

Whether we are lost emotionally, or spiritually, or physically, hope is a key ingredient to moving foreword. Hope keeps the wife of a comatose patient faithful. Hope keeps a discouraged parent diligent with their rebellious child. Hope keeps a prisoner of war alive, a cancer patient from giving up and a widower praying. Hope unlike any other motion of the brain and heart keeps us from a collision course with self-induced catastrophe.

Unlike anything else, hope is the most dangerous thing to go missing.

In these photographs, I intentionally chose a washed out and under-saturated exposure. The point was to contrast what would ordinarily be a rich and bright forest setting, with a dull almost dream like scenario. Much akin to the confusion and stress that often threatens hope.

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