Karst considers the idea of a katabasis, a mythic descent into the subterranean underworld, as an allegory for exploration into memory and the subconscious. Through this journey, boundaries thin, allowing the body to transgress into another realm. This project documents cave systems in Southwestern Virginia that my late father and I explored as a child, following a loose narrative of my attempts to induce a katabasis into the subterranean world, and consequently into grief. The resulting photographs serve as evidence of mythic, poetic, and subconscious spaces that explore the visual reconstructions we create while encountering the mysticism that is produced when time and depth work in tandem.

Working in the darkroom is an emulation of being inside of a cave: it’s dark, wet, erupting with sensation, and produces some kind of holy imagery. This work is produced by printing on expired silver gelatin paper, scarred by light over the course of its lifetime, allowing the imagery that etches into it to reflect the dim conditions of the underworld. This project also features works utilizing handmade abaca paper, silver nitrate emulsion, and reprinted archival ephemera, emulating the shrouded visual representations of memory that we search for in the darkness. These documentations are then transformed into photographic collages consisting of visceral textures, obscured ghosts, and portals into other realms. Karst highlights the thin connective tissue that divides the natural world from the supernatural world, and examines the obsessive urge to descend in order to confront grief, desire, and divinity.