hello freedom - so nice to meet you

i've been driving down the west coast of FL for two weeks now. i know it isn't long, but it has meant a lot to me.

this place has been my home for 25 years.

as a little girl i spent my days tagging along side my siblings, bike rides and food fights, climbing the giant oaks, and saving fallen feathers.

my entire youth was spent here.

it was here where i first fell in love. my 16th year was filled with broken curfews and skinny dipping in lakes. that summer i refused to cut my hair and it grew past my elbows. it was wildly curly and completely unmanigable - a fitting self likeness.

it was this place where i sat with my father and watched him take his last breaths.

my 21st year i stood in the atlantic ocean and scattered his ashes from the shores of anastasia island. afterwards my sister and i sat on the dunes, smoked huge cuban cigars, and drank irish whiskey to honor all the love he gave us.

as i grew older i tried to forge a new life for myself. i finished art school and traveled the world. i studied in foreign countries and backpacked through 15 or more. i spent 3 years on the run, doing whatever i could to escape this place, thinking i would find myself.

the thing is, i couldn't find myself in places where i did not exist.

now i sit here, watching the sun settle into the atlantic, and i am grateful to this place and for all of my-self it has showed me.

i am learning the hard way (as i often do with everything else) that so much of my identity is rooted here: the heavy humid air, the barefoot shoppers in super markets, bike rides and water rafts, cold beers that get smuggled onto the beach in hand bags, and dogs with their heads hanging out car windows... this place is my freedom and i am desperate to take back.

that is why i am doing this.

only 5 days left on the road and i'm running out of film...

**the photo above is of me at beer can island.

***i used my sx 70 & expired time zero film. the double exp. is just cheap scanner tricks, but i like it.