FOOD FOR THOUGHT

This is a photo series I shot to document the transformation of food from the woods to the plate, from lustrous specs of blood about to oxidize to the delight of a well balanced meal. For me, hunting is a lovely dance between utter concentration, communion with the woods, and the fleeting aggression of the shot. After plotting and waiting for an animal in crepuscular stillness, there is a starkness, an ambivalence, to having it right there in front of you, warm but without life. It is a weighty moment of sadness and beauty and I prefer to navigate it alone. 

That moment is also, importantly, the point of transition to the work that must be done to feed yourself and your loved ones. Sadly, our industrial meat-processing system, from egregious human labor abuses in slaughterhouses to clingwrap’d pieces of meat at the store, depersonalizes this process to the point of obscuring it from view. Nothing could be further from the respect with which my father and godfather taught me to hunt, butcher, and cook wild animals. The process of taking an animal with my recurve bow and then dressing it, aging it, prepping it, making stock from the bones, and preparing the meat for my nearest and dearest is humbling and deeply restorative.