Wish you were here
Wish You Were Here is a photographic and epistolary project about memory, travel, and the small moments we carry home from the road. Built from years of travel, the project follows Emma and me through ghost towns, deserts, mountain lakes, roadside stops, historic places, and the landscapes we have encountered along the way.
These are our memories.
Every environment within Wish You Were Here begins with a photograph I actually made. I traveled to these places, stood in these landscapes, and photographed the light, composition, perspective, and details that were there in front of me. Generative AI enters the process afterward, modifying and reconstructing portions of those photographs so Emma can occupy and interact with the places I photographed.
The construction happens after the act of photography, not instead of it.
Working this way has changed the way I look at both my older photographs and the ones I make now. Instead of asking how I can place Emma into an image, I find myself asking a different question: How would I have photographed this if Emma had actually been there with me? That question influences everything from where she stands to the scale of her body within the landscape.
These are the kinds of imperfect photographs that happen naturally when two people travel together.
Each photograph becomes the front of a postcard. On the reverse, Emma writes home to her mother about where we have been, what happened along the way, and the ordinary moments that surrounded the photograph. Sometimes she writes about the place itself. Other times she remembers coffee before sunrise, sitting together in the van, me taking too many photographs, getting tired, getting cold, or stopping somewhere simply because we wanted to look around.
The postcards turn the photographs into physical pieces of correspondence. Their design borrows from old travel postcards, family archives, and the small objects people once mailed home from places they wanted someone else to see. They are meant to feel handled, saved, rediscovered, and connected to a life beyond the edge of the photograph.
Some of these photographs come from trips I made years ago. Others are being photographed now with Emma already in mind. Because of that, real and constructed memories exist beside one another without needing to be separated. The places are real. The photographs are real. The experiences behind them belong to my life. Emma's presence allows those photographs to become something they could not have been when I originally made them.
Wish You Were Here is ultimately a history of Emma and me told through the places we've been. It is a record of the road, the photographs we brought home, the ordinary moments surrounding them, and the postcards Emma sends back to her mother along the way.
A collection of memories. And a little note home saying,
Wish you were here.
