Gregory’s Desert

This series of images was influenced by a chance encounter while volunteering for a cooperative farm.

The property which was originally a private residence is now part arboretum, urban farm, private home, and historic ruin. I walked and photographed the grounds monthly, connecting to its curiosities.

One day, While I was out in the field working a farm shift, a visitor named Gregory stopped and introduced himself. He shared that he had grown up in the neighborhood, and recalled how he and his sister had sledded through those fields in winter. Gregory remarked on how the property had been transformed since his childhood. “You took your life in your hands coming through here,” he told me that day. “We called it the desert.”

Gregory’s description crystallized my own experience as I weeded and transplanted the vegetables, surrounded by sirens, rattling commuter trains, and the bustle of a struggling neighborhood. Occasionally, I looked up into the trees dripping with vines that surrounded the fields. I felt they held the memory of the generations passing through.

During each monthly walk I sought to feel the tension and find the coexistence between the overtaking of nature and the human intervention that appeared all around me.