Founded in the late 17th century and rebuilt in the 1800s, Tumacácori was part of a chain of Spanish colonial missions meant to anchor empire at the northern edge of New Spain. Unlike its better-known counterpart farther north, this mission did not survive intact. Roofs collapsed. Interiors were exposed. The building yielded slowly to weather, abandonment, and time.

Out here, stories don’t live in the cloud -they live in stones Here in a remote part of the Southwest, the stones hold a library of memories and messages from the past. People returned here for generations—leaving marks and meaning… proof that they were here.
An archive that needs no power only the sun to see it.

In the Sonoran Desert, I used a 175-year-old photographic process—wet plate collodion tintypes—to make handmade portraits of saguaro cacti, some of which have been standing here for more than 200 years. This is a behind-the-scenes record of the shoot: the setup, the timing, and the desert conditions that shape every plate.