Capturing a wedding day with my camera is monumentally easier than trying to describe it with my words. In telling the story through my lens I’m able to focus solely on everyone else’s emotions, but in writing it down here I have to look deeper, inward, at my own. What can I possibly say about Katie and Matthew that will do their story justice? The feelings overwhelm me, as does their love. Their story. Their sheer existence. I met Katie four years ago when she and three other incredible, talented, and driven women invited me to make images for their recently launched digital fashion magazine. Katie has a warmth about her that is radiant. A kindness that is wholly exuberant, uninhibited and unfettered. It flows so easily from her it’s impossible believe anything other than that she is comprised of the truest heart and a sweeping, encompassing, unconditional love. We became...
on art + madness + coming back to who you always were | a portrait series ft. hanna voxland
“Follow your inner moonlight; don’t hide the madness.” -Ginsberg I’ve always known I would be an artist. Creation is written on my bones – etched in the marrow like ornate and intricate carvings. If questioned in my youth, I couldn’t have told you I would become a photographer. This medium was elusive then, slippery and wet and wholly unformed, still ruminating and gestating within my soul. I thought I’d be something, anything else, really. A designer. A poet. A writer. A teacher. Eventually my dreams gave way and I morphed into something entirely unrecognizable. A destined-for-medicority suburban housewife with a ho-hum career and a sport utility vehicle and a Kohls’ charge. The carvings had been buried. Their stories were devoured by the mundane tedium of the shoulds and supposed-tos. Frozen dinners and soda cans and lawn mowers. Escrow accounts and backyard bbq’s and societal norms. // One day, amidst the chaos of to-do’s and...
on love and life and stories and hope. remembering two thousand fifteen.
Five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes. Thousands of images. Three hundred sixty five days. Dozens of Stories. Fifty Two weeks. Fourteen weddings. Twelve months. Eight states. One year. Holy shit it’s been a whirlwind year. They say (whoever “they” are) that you should do something every day that scares you – so today that thing is going to be talking about my accomplishments. I’m terrible at self-promotion but I’m going to give it an honest-to-goodness go. Gulp. In August I hosted my first workshop, Write Your Life, and am working on launching my second. Three days later I lost my corporate job and was catapulted head first into legitimate, scary-as-f*ck, self-employment, though it is a position I should have chosen for myself ages ago. This fall I was asked to hand letter a magazine cover for Minnesota Monthly and the beautiful Lucia at Utterly Engaged tasked me with writing an...
love is autumn colors and flower crowns and puppy kisses and canoes. love is first wedding anniversaries spent in the wild. love is danielle + terry.
Danielle + Terry were married in the woods on a perfect summer-fading-into-fall day just over a year ago. Their wedding day was ripe with emotion and joy and laughter and beer and dancing and hot summer sun. On that beautiful September day we knew that we’d be getting together once more, Terry + Danielle in their wedding attire and I with my camera. We just didn’t know when. Autumn faded into winter, and winter into another perfect wedding season for me, and a wonderful season of newly-wedded busy-ness and bliss for the Biercaps. Suddenly their anniversary was upon us, already the leaves were beginning to settle into their harvest glow before falling softly to a snow-ready ground, the air turning cooler, denser, the breeze blowing the seasons over with a damp heaviness. It was time. We met along the bluffs of the St. Croix River, one of my most favorite places in the...
