These works are a selection from the series To Seneca and were photographed on 35 mm film during walks along the border of Ridgewood, Queens and Bushwick, Brooklyn between 2012 and 2023. Digital scans were made of the negatives and inkjet-printed on rag paper at a size of 11 by 17 inches. Their final presentation is accompanied by poetry and creative nonfiction that connects the landscape with my personal history.
These bordering neighborhoods are significant for the distinct, sometimes jarring, attitudes to nature expressed there. These contrasts are heightened by the visible legacies of historic political, racial, and class divisions, which finely separate this area of Brooklyn from Queens. I was especially drawn to document the ruderal plants that repopulate––each year, with climate change, more prolifically––abandoned lots, concrete crevices, and neglected planters. Their ability to forge a home for themselves and to flourish amidst such precarity, far from their native lands, resonates with my own intense struggles to make a home here in the United States.
Through these images, I hope we come to see loaded terms such as “invasive” or “pioneer,” which circulate around ruderal plants, in a new light—even as we are inspired by non-human agency, intelligence, and tenacity.