The work as a whole is about endings and beginnings. About those things that happen to us repeatedly or that we need to do or be repeatedly. It is about how those repetitions relate and resolve each other. And about how an ending is really just a beginning in disguise.

For the trans boy, male relationships can seem completely enigmatic while simultaneously being a careful example to study. My relationships with my father and grandfather had a lot of distance built into them. And perhaps never really developed into something really solid and reliable in the traditional sense. But they were both good relationships for me. Both men, especially my dad, taught me a lot about what it means to be a good man, and in that way he taught me not only how to be a “good daughter” but a son as well.

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The crop dusters have empty spaces in the wings, are missing propellers, and sometimes have holes in the body of the plane because they aren’t physically whole. But they fly. And beautifully because the sky is even more a part of their being. They are in it and it is in them. The blank spaces make them whole and functional.

The crop dusters don’t have anyone in the cockpits. They have empty spaces in the wings, are missing propellers, and sometimes have holes in the body of the plane because they aren’t physically whole. But they fly. And beautifully

“contained”

The act of taking photographs is often about observable joy. Light makes odd things beautiful. The frame is the container that holds a photographer's point of view. Photography is a magical medium.

Our constructed containers (photos, windows, bodies, genders, points of view. . . . ) are so important to us. It's how we form language. It's how we self-define and relate to each other. There is beauty in being contained – in finding our box, our labels, our place in the world. But there is danger in the containment too – danger of not fitting, of not relating, of not being comforted or understood. We thrust these limitations on ourselves and on other people all the time.

All of these are about an exercise in trust. Trust that physics will actually get a huge hunk of metal up into the sky. Trust that in a moment of suspension, that bridge will stay up and allow you to cross over to the next part of your journey. Trust that by putting one foot in front of the other and following your intuition, the path that you are on will be the one you are supposed to be walking.

I find myself taking photos of frames and containers all the time. There is always a hope for beauty in these boxes and boxed reflections. A hope that we will see our containers as leaping off points – ballasts for leaping into the real. A place for the inhaled breath for the exhale of being. What a world it would be if our labels could be a home bases for honesty rather than traps that limit what we can say and be. These images are about embarrassing the container and the potential for more outside of it.