It never occurred to me that I wouldn’t grow up to be a scientist. I knew that I belonged outdoors and it seemed to me that the outdoors belonged to science; plants and animals were meant to be observed and to observe is a verb with heavy scientific connotations. 

When I abandoned my microscope and field journal for a camera and a sketchbook, I naturally aimed my lens at the things I already understood. Through the lens I came to appreciate the reality behind my affinity for the natural world- while I was interested in the complex mechanisms behind living organisms and geologic processes, I felt more inclined to capture these ideas visually than to record and represent them numerically. 

This body of work comes from a desire to display my collection, to give it a chance to earn its keep…my cluttery boxes tend to take up space, collect dust, and earn eye-rolls from my housemates otherwise. Many of them are not necessarily things that would be noticed by anyone passing by, so I have chosen to display them in a poetic way to encourage observation and in turn, appreciation.

 
We decorate our lives with flamboyant natural things- floral bouquets and gardens filled with pink-and-purple petunias- but there is an ornamental quality to the pieces we discard that goes to waste. It was my goal with these photographs to elevate these objects and prove that they have worth.