Selections from Pallor Mortis, Texas

Photobook, 2026

Pallor Mortis, Texas is a photo book detailing the slowing, congealing, and speculative cessation of collective care in the communities of Central Texas. The term Pallor Mortis references the most temporary stage of death that humans experience, where blood slowly begins to stop circulating in the body, causing a pale appearance. This state is not quite life, not quite death- a small detail, but one I felt described the fracturing of interpersonal relationships in broader Southern communities amidst a level of political turmoil. 

My primary interest in creating this project was to produce a cartography about this phenomenon I perceived, and how I could express collective feeling through observing the environment around me. I decided to create a set of limitations: (1) only produce images in black and white, (2) only discarded places or objects would be photographed, and (3) I would only shoot within the boundaries of the Texas Hill Country. 

The objects’ discardment becomes a larger allegory to the South as a political landscape, and Southerners when seen by society, but not met within it.  I see both the degradation and simultaneous potential in myself, my communities, and my home in these images. By capturing these objects and places, building their narrative, and seeing their potential beyond what they are, I am hoping to bring about these same questions in ourselves as Southerners, and Americans as a whole.