The first snow arrives before Thanksgiving. The tourists, campers, and visitors have left. Winter settles in for at least six months. The snowy mountains and leafless trees become my—and many others’—only companions.

Situated in the Catskills, “Monologue” delves into the intricate relationship between nature and human presence within the forest. It reflects on poignant issues of land ownership, resource right and coexistence.  The project began in 2020 when the pandemic grounded my family and I in a cottage in the Catskill Mountains.  It bound us closely to nature.  The immersive observation of changes in the forest and the loggers’ request to log on our land made me profoundly aware of the human impact on the life cycle of nature at such an intimate distance. 

Surrounded by dense woods, I realized that the seemingly ancient forest was, in fact, in its infancy. The trees in this region had been exhausted by the 1930s after two hundred years of relentless logging. The notion of absolute independence, liberty, and entitlement to the land is a complex mix of longing, perception, and denial. The Lenape people, the mountains' original inhabitants for over 1,200 years, were driven westward in the 1700s. Today, their presence is reduced to only the names of places and backroads.

“Monologue” is a visual experience that interweaves these histories, beliefs, and contradictions, reflecting both reality and the constructed world.