Going Back
Trauma, despair, circumstances beyond my control. This peak on Afton Mountain became a focal point during my routine passage to visit my parents as they approached death.
Inspiration for Going Back
I was born in Waynesboro, Virginia, grew up in Fishersville, and now live in Charlottesville, thirty minutes from my childhood home and my now-deceased parents. I traveled over Afton Mountain routinely to be with them as we aged, photographing the same scene through the car window.
I made the photographs while driving west on I-64, just as I crossed the mountain and began to descend.
The scene centers on a single peak in the first viewshed to the north.
The image is presented in a square format, with the mountains and peak in the lower third and the sky filling the remaining space.
I work to align the peak so it rises slightly above the distant ridge and the two peaks behind it.
The foreground is often blurred, sometimes catching the guardrail as it passes.
The peak was my steady
as the atmosphere around it changed—the light, the season, the time of day, my state of mind.
I photographed this view between 2017 and 2024, using various iPhones along the way.