16" x 20", printed on Hahnemuhle Museum Etching cottonrag paper.  Limited edition of 4.
 
From the "Unconcious Emotion" series.
 
Photography is a passion that not only helps me slow down the hectic pace of life, but also allows me to explore a little deeper; not only into the scenery, but a part of myself that is often conveyed into the images I capture.
 
The work I have selected in this series were largely taken at a point during covid where the loss of work, difficulty finding more work and the general lockdown of life, prompted the need to get out into outdoor isolation, in an attempt to regain motivation, and the peace of mind that some semblance of normalcy can bring.
 
Through the ghost towns and backroads, there seemed to be a focus of my emotion in the views I was being drawn to, that seemed analogous to the circumstance that much of the world was realizing.  Searching through the stagnant decay of “lockdown” for the light outside, the love outside, some kind of life other than the life we had come to live during Covid.  This work represents that subconscious emotion, that seemed to prevail; a rage against the dying of the light as Dylan Thomas so eloquently put it.
 
The journey is the destination.

Richard Collens