This daily photographic practice has deepened to become about being in the same place in nature, everyday at the same time (sunset), as a way to provide structure, stability, calm, hope. Waikiki Beach – Cape Disappointment – Ilwaco, WA until the quarantine on March 24, then Long Beach, WA.
The two missing days were due my having to leave the area temporarily.
Included in the Canadian Art Therapy Association publication May, 2020
Everyday, Recently 2020
I live on the coast of Washington, and on February 1st, I started a daily practice of going to my local beach every day for a month, and photographing it at the same time, and same spot. It was about taking the time to look at something from the same perspective every day at the same time. For the first month, I went between 9 and 10 in the morning, and then at sunset. It began as meditative practice of ‘being present’ in a place and documenting the daily changes there, but than it expanded. I have a strong relationship to nature which has been deepened by this global crisis. Although I’m an interdisciplinary artist, photography is the medium I went to first.
The quarantine is not dissimilar to my daily life as an introvert, in terms of isolation and social distancing, but there’s now a heightened sense of anxiety and depression because it’s affecting so many other people. On March 24, when our quarantine started, I had to move out of my trailer in the state park I was living in/working at called Cape Disappointment, and rent a beach cabin further up the Peninsula. My daily meditative photo practice has now deepened to become about being in the same place everyday at the same time as a way to provide structure, stability, calm, hope. I’ve noticed it sometimes feels like I’m in ‘clean’ nature vs. ‘unclean’ nature: which is the virus. Being in nature, devoid of other people, feels different now.These kinds of changes in the world feel important to document through my art practice.
I’ve been organizing the images for online presentation on my senseofplace LAB.com site; an on-going public art platform since 2008 in San Francisco. I’m presently interested how these images are seen collectively, so they are arranged very tightly together as a composite of each month. This grid has come to represent other aspects of our life now; a cartoon, a calendar marking time, the Zoom format of our human interactions, window panes, an inventory, a list, a catalogue, buildings seen in our minds.
Laura Halsey Brown
April 30, 2020