Imogen-Blue

If I had to draw a map of those 9 months between the day he left me and the day I began my first hike in the Japanese countryside, that map would be a confusion of lines in all directions, like the sparklers we held the night I left for Chicago, spitting out embers. To Baltimore and back to Chicago and China to Xuchang and Xi'an, to markets, tea shops, hotels, bedrooms, again and again and back to Baltimore, to Japan, to Shanghai. These lines would show you all the places I ran to but not the ways I killed the person I was, the old me. The things I felt and the unfaltering love I felt for a man who would eventually leave me. Like those sparklers, the map would come to a halt. - Hakone June 20th 2016

"Wood & Stone" is a series of photographs documenting my pilgrimage throughout various sites of Japanese spirituality in search of healing. Over the course of six months, visiting over twelve sites, I use the action of hiking as a cathartic vehicle of processing struggle and in turn, recovery.