“Lots of time to read” is a series documenting monasteries around the world that I started in 2017 with funding from a fellowship at Xavier University. I was drawn to the idea of solitude, and I wanted to see whether my conceptions of monastic life fit the way monks in different cultures actually lived. In the summer of 2019 I received funding from the University of Kentucky to continue this project as a part of my graduate studies. Through these two funded opportunities I was able to take photographs at over twenty monasteries on three different continents. 

 

I think of this series as my artistic origin story. It documents a pilgrimage that grew from my desire to escape increasingly complicated expectations of the world around me. This series is also about growth: I learned so many ways people experience both devotion and doubt. Each place I visited made it harder to ignore my biased understanding of sociopolitical forces that permeate monasteries. Each photograph I took made me increasingly aware of my utter inability to fully represent the internal complexities of my subjects’ day-to-day life. Each day taught me that every solitude is its own universe. 

 

While I set out with the goal of photographing monasteries through a rigorous, documentary approach, I’m not convinced these photographs are adequate representations of the places I visited. Instead, I think they speak more broadly about the experience of searching for meaning in quiet places. 

 

In a conversation I had while photographing a small monastic community in Alaska, the Abbot shared that summer was his favorite season: The weather was nice, the monastery could house visitors, and salmon were plentiful. Naturally, I asked what winter months at the monastery were like, to which he gave a slight smile and said, “In the winter we have lots of time to read.”