"Return"

The last three years have marked a significant absence of kids in my day-to-day life - in total contrast to the rest of my life when I had many three-to-ten year old friends. As a young adult constantly surrounded by other adults, I began to recognize this void and how it could be so easily filled when I was back at home by even an hour of playing games with a group of kids at the youth center my mom works at. These little interactions lifted my spirits and showed me how valuable a child's perspective is.  

My work explores the idea of childhood and play as it relates to adulthood. I'm questioning why we seem to have lost the real freedom and joy we experienced as kids and traded it for getting stuck in our "adult ways."

As a photographer "stuck in the ways" of digital photography, I chose to explore this concept through a medium completely unfamiliar to me, medium format color film. I was able to process this with eight precious kids by photographing them on a sunny Saturday.

Children seem to know something we used to know but chose to forget. I wonder if we could re-learn the good parts of being young. What if kids can help us return to this freedom?

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Pro400H film, Mamiya RZ67, Scans by Richard Photo Lab

Exbibited in Marion, Indiana in April 2018