Going 'home' is so vital right now, we all want to be among the people we love. All of us, every human on earth has had to change plans and alter our lives due to COVID. Weddings have been cancelled or missed, graduations were altered and visits to family were cancelled. My wife, Abby, and I are no exception
, which is hard because we really missed our families.
In August we decided to take a road trip and visit our families in Michigan and North Carolina. Abby and I have been taking COVID very seriously so it was a hard decision to drive across the country. We plotted and planned our route so that we never went inside of a building - no convenience stores, no grocery stores, no restaurants and no rest areas. In Michigan we stayed with my Mother and in North Carolina we stayed with Abby's family.
This trip to see family was so revitalizing and needed. Along with being amongst people we love, we also visited places that were important to us, in our respective places we grew up. We learned so much more about each other and can now see the places in each others stories.
We took a trip to watch and photograph the sunset at a beach on Lake Superior, one that I had first photographed in 1999. At that time I was only a couple of years into learning photography. The sunset photo I took that afternoon was the first photograph that I felt was great. I was beginning to understand how I saw the outside world, and what it took to make the photograph match my vision.
I have since been back to that same spot every time I visit my mother in Michigan. It, in a way, has become part of my going home. For all of us, it can be a great exercise to photograph the same subject over years, to notice how it has changed and if your vision has changed. Try not to turn away from re-imagining a scene you have photographed before. The art of making images is constantly evolving and you just might get very different visions of the same subject. And every visit just might feel like going home.
Here are some images from three visits to the same beach, Calumet Waterworks in Calumet Michigan.
1999
2017
2020
I love all of these images. They are each so distinct despite the involvement of the same beautiful character. I am also so grateful for our trip. It was a time for massive connection and reconnection- with land and water both familiar and novel, with family we felt so far from during this time, and with each other after being in the same little house everyday for months. It was made particularly important and powerful after lacking connection for so long because of the pandemic.
I am so grateful for you, love of mine!