HEART LAND is an ongoing photography series about my relationship with the rural Southern farming community where I grew up. Through portraits of family and friends alongside photographs of the landscape, the work examines the complicated ties that remain between me and the place I once called home.

Growing up in deep South Georgia was defined by big skies, afternoon thunderstorms, endless corn and tobacco fields, shelling peas all summer, and Sunday church followed by a visit to McDonald's for ice cream. It was a place that shaped me, but it was also a place where survival meant hiding my queerness. Leaving offered safety and freedom, but it also created distance from people and places I care about. These photographs are a way of staying connected to a place that continues to shape me, even as I remain uncertain of my place within it. They reflect both my affection for home and my ongoing sense of estrangement from it.

I make the work using analog film, vintage lenses, and toy cameras. Slowing down with this process allows me to reconnect with my family and friends in their everyday spaces, while the subtle distortion captures a little of the unease I always feel when visiting. Familiar scenes can feel both intimate and uncertain, and the imperfections in the images help convey that feeling. By photographing everyday gatherings, domestic spaces, and the surrounding landscape, I am exploring what remains when attachment, memory, and distance occupy the same place.