Harvest Season was named before the book itself was even conceived. It started as a proclamation during a barrage of texts for a trip I was planning around June 2018. I had never been to Provence, and I was overdue for a vacation with my girlfriends, especially after years of sleeping in a rolling fart missile with Death Cab for Cutie.

I could barely contain myself: “You guys, we’re going to be in Provence during HARVEST SEASON.” I must have said it a hundred times without realizing because it quickly became a running joke between Kathleen and Casey - they would send something like “Did you guys know it’s going to be HARVEST SEASON when we’re in France?!?” to our group text, apropos of absolutely nothing.

My excitement about the food that we were going to be both cooking and eating was one of two reasons I didn’t leave the group text immediately, despite my legendary hatred of them. The other reason was actual coordination of logistics for a two-and-a-half week vacation from southern France down to Rome, which I had wedged between a solo trip to Switzerland and my friends’ 20th wedding anniversary in Sicily.

Harvest Season became one of the evolving names for that group text (final iteration: Slow Roma Harvest Bitchez) and it only seemed fitting to take my earnest-proclamation-cum-inside-joke back and give it yet another layer.

Please understand that my life doesn’t just move seamlessly from one Swiss mountain town to a French lavender field all the time like an asshole. I helped planned this trip through both the loss of my grandfather and a dear friend within the same 24 hours. I had been on two deathbeds in one week, one in West Texas, one in Tacoma. I was tired. I mean, we’re all a bit tired. Aging can really take it out of you. But this was the gauzy-brained, “when was the last time I felt something?” exhaustion of deep grief.

Aside from grief, my drug of choice is burnout and I had finally managed to work that one into my photography practice. A fun activity normally immune from my overachieving, I had spent the better part of five years shooting, well, everything. Every Death Cab tour, birthday party, dinner party, birthday dinner party, cabin weekend, etc. Many events were captured out of actual desire, some out of fear of missing important moments, and all of them for practice. I am a much better photographer as a result. No regrets. Opportunities present themselves and it’s just hard to find the right time to say no, even if you desperately need a break.

I needed to let myself off the hook for how deeply sad I was, as well as subdue the obligation to be the sole documentarian on this trip. I wanted to grieve next to my girlfriends, emoting or staring blankly into fresh ratatouille and copious glasses (um, bottles) of wine. It took a lot of effort to let go. What is the payoff for working so hard at making photographs you yourself are never in? Did I even exist without photographic proof? How was I going to edit out the presence of a fourth person, a now ex-friend, who was unanimously asked to leave before we set off for Italy? Is it any wonder I’m always tired when I try to find answers to problems that have yet to materialize? I’ve learned that running around in circles until I keel over is actually part of my creative process and this time was to be no different. I finally relented, giving myself permission to only shoot when I felt like it, trusting I would be able to find wholeness in whatever images actually made it onto my camera. Fake it til you make it, right?

My favorite set of photographs were born out of a particularly strange day, moving from one temporary residence to another. We had settled into an almost telepathic state and it was clear without anyone saying anything that we all needed a “home day” - free of plans, expectations and car trips. As we lazed from the afternoon into the evening, an effortless momentum settled over us. Casey began roasting eggplant in the coals of a wood fire; Kathleen opened the wine and put out the meat plate; and I found the volleyball and the pétanque set. Driven by an ease I hadn’t felt in awhile, I picked up my camera. My Leica, a camera that could definitely double as a bludgeoning tool, felt like a natural extension of my own hand. Not weightless, but infinitely lighter in that moment. We played lawn games, ate, drank and shot well into the middle of the night and it became one of many moments on this trip that reconnected me with my creativity. I had forgotten that before all else, it *must* be fun.

Long story longer: we had a great vacation, despite the abrupt departure of the fourth member of our traveling party. We swam, ate our body weight in melon and mirabels, read books, played more pétanque, drank plenty of local swill and talked A LOT. We witnessed the birth of Casey’s new dramedy “Werner Herzog Goes to the Beach”, in which she speaks about the futility of existence (in a frighteningly spot-on Herzog impersonation) while floating on her back in the Mediterranean. We connected in ways that might have been impossible had we taken less time, traveled closer to home or brought our partners with us. I took photos sometimes.

I didn’t look at the photographs for the rest of 2018 and well into the next year. By March 2019, I had shot an entire body of work for a class I was taking on photo books and constructed my first hardcover book by hand. By May 2019, I was taking an in-depth class on Adobe Lightroom, for which part of the final project was to make a PDF in the Book module of said software. Have I mentioned I’m an overachiever? I decided to make a real-ass book. And I knew exactly which pile of photos I wanted to mine.

The process of putting this book together involved printing out shitty 4 x 6 versions of my favorite photographs and spreading them out on my dining room table, trying to find a connection between the images regardless of the date of capture. After a few days, my gaze softened and I started to see connections between my two girlfriends and the landscapes and small details I had captured. Through color, shape and mood, I found a wealth of subconscious links that excited me far more than chronology. The landscape we all fell in love with together for the first time was reflecting on us and us on it - dresses mirroring foliage, doorways as portraits, lazy street cats drinking champagne in repose by the pool.

The narrative I constructed showed me how we fell deeper in love with each other during those weeks. It was the first time I recognized how much power there is in being a witness. I watched Kathleen and Casey, both of whom I had known for years and introduced to each other, become closer independently of me. I found a lot of satisfaction in not being in the photographs, but instead allowing my presence to be manifested through my perspective and curation. My superpower as a witness was being able to shape how the three of us communally remember this trip in the future.

I wanted the physicality of this book to reflect how much personal meaning was in these images so I opted for a large 12 x 12 hardcover, allowing equal proportion for each photograph regardless of the images’ landscape or portrait orientations. The layout was easily uploaded directly to Blurb. Three (not inexpensive) copies of the book were sent to me a few weeks later, dedication pages and all. Blurb did a really good job (five stars, would use again). I was proud to give these as gifts and also have one on my coffee table to share with others.

I’m now writing this during the months-long global Covid-19 quarantine and unsurprisingly I’ve pulled this book out way more than any other capital-i important photo books I own (which is quite a few). Traveling back to a place I am currently not allowed to go to, with people that I am not allowed to see during this time, and having my work in physical form made an already meaningful time continue to grow deeper and more embedded long after the girls flew home and I continued onto Sicily. I pine for this time more than I could have expected. Thankfully, I no longer see the days I didn’t shoot as glaring holes in the narrative. I am able to remember the moments I didn’t capture nearly as vividly as the ones I did. Each selected image now acts as a prompt for the recall of hundreds of other undocumented moments that, up until now, were left back in the fertile dirt of another continent. Harvest Season was more complete than I could have ever hoped.