The Hidden Fortress

Rising from Paradise Valley, Montana, the Mount Cowen massif is remote and sees few visitors. Composed of high alpine cirques and clean granite spires, the mountain holds some of the oldest rock in North America. The Hidden Fortress is my photographic pursuit of the unseen, made while I explored the massif and the rocks themselves.

The feeling of incomprehensible awe for the natural world, coined the Sublime by 19th-century Romantics, drives this project. This raw reaction of fantastical terror that I experienced here is inherently intertwined with the deep history of the land itself. Using photography not only as art, but as evidence of geologic time, I create a visual tension in the landscape. The Hidden Fortress explores this space at all elevations and scales, leaving the viewer to question where they are, and how they got there.