Photography Projects

Grief & Loss in the Minnesota Valley National Wildlife Refuge

During the cold, gloomy months of November through March of 2024/25, Ryan spent many hours meandering through the 2,339 acre refuge landscape in search of imagery for this project.

Ryan hopes viewers will recognize themes of isolation and barrenness, death and loss, exposure and dread and the expectation of time moving forward in spite of it all. In our grief over someone or some thing lost, we, like the landscape, are altered and changed as Winter comes and goes and time passes like a designed rhythm.

Ryan mostly used a variety of black & white film formats to document this unique late Fall, Winter and early Spring landscape. This collection of images focusses specifically on the Long Meadow Lake Unit of the MN Valley National Wildlife Refuge in Bloomington, MN.

Ryan intends this collection of photographs to be viewed alongside the 2009 album Riceboy Sleeps by Jonsi & Alex Somers. Specifically, track 4, Stokkseyri. He hopes to include this music if there is ever a physical showing of this project.

If you are interested in purchasing a signed print from any of the images used in the project, your support will go towards funding the creation of a photobook and gallery show and would be much appreciated.

Please reach out to Ryan via his contact form.