It took me a very long time to be able to say the words, “I’m a photographer,” without looking like I was getting a tooth pulled. Sometimes the idea that I am an artist still seems far too fantastical to imagine.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve seen things differently, chased the light, imagined worlds within worlds. I’ve sought to capture what I see for almost as long. But there was a lot of living I had to do before I found a way to see that drive as part of my identity. I spent my young adulthood in medical training, and in my “boring day job” I now work as a pulmonologist and intensive care physician in Albuquerque, NM. It is an amazing privilege to do what I do, but it also brought an onslaught of trauma and terror in 2020, as I was thrust onto the front line of the COVID-19 pandemic. As I grappled with death and helplessness, I found healing in creating beauty. These images are the legacy of what I discovered within myself during those years.