In a hot July a few years back, my wife and I moved into the home we'd bought which sits on a wooded hilltop deep in Chatham County, North Carolina. Because of the vociferous flock of corvids that frequent the place, we started calling our place Crow Hill. It had been a home for three previous owners, each of whom had left a legacy of their vision for their lives in this place, and now we had begun our own tenure. I began photographing around, inspired by the idea that one's own back yard (or woodlot) is as interesting as the most faraway, exotic place to which one might travel to photograph. The woods, the light, the layered evidences of previous occupants, the garden, all draw my attention, and all become portals to an other-world that sometimes one sees only by not trying to do so, but just by being present, at home in a moment and a place.
© kenneth jackson arts
