Before the Fire Lit My Dreams

​Before the Fire Lit My Dreams (2024)

​In Robin Wall Kimmerer’s essay "Burning Cascade Head," she describes a ritual where the land itself is set ablaze to call the salmon home—a ceremony that wove people, waterways, and the earth into a cycle of renewal. This act of reciprocity bound the community to the land and to the salmon, keeping both in balance. But as the ceremony faded, so too did that balance, leaving only traces of what once held the world together.

The title of this exhibition, Before the Fire Lit My Dreams, is drawn from a moment in Kimmerer’s essay where a shift occurs. We go from unknowing to knowing, from disconnected to connected. The fire lights the way to deeper understanding. It evokes that profound instant of awakening, where we begin to recognize the threads that tie us to each other and to this world that sustains us.

This exhibition is my attempt to connect with those threads, to touch the place where memory meets presence. Through 12 film photograph diptychs—one for each month of a full year—we witness the seasons change, reflecting on the ways our families, tribal lands, and waterways hold stories of time and place. 16 of these images are in-camera double exposures, layered frames that evoke the interwoven connections between people and land, seasons and cycles. I invite you to not only witness these connections but to reflect on your own place within the ever-turning cycles of this planet, finding a mirror to your own relationship with nature’s rhythms.
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At the base of each work, I’ve placed a stack of poems—my own words as small offerings. 

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Documentation photography: Mario Gallucci