2025
Karst considers the idea of a katabasis, a mythic descent into the subterranean underworld, as an allegory for exploration into memory and the subconscious. 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 memory and grief. The resulting photographs act as evidence of mythic, poetic, and subconscious spaces that explore the visual reconstructions we create while trying to understand time and loss. The work is shown in installation-based structures that span from shadowbox frames to structures emulating trailhead signs or cavers’ bulletin boards.
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 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. All these documentations are then transformed into photographic collages of visceral textures, obscured ghosts, and portals into other realms. Karst highlights the thin connective tissue that divides this world from the supernatural world, and examines the obsessive urge to go deep in order to confront grief, desire, and divinity.
Installation
Backspace Gallery, Madison, Wisconsin, USA
2025