The Intimate Journey Of Trent Davis Bailey
- Words
- Monika Mróz
In ‘The North Fork‘, American photographer Trent Davis Bailey returns to the place from his childhood to piece together a picture of the land and its inhabitants, paralleling it with his own experience and memory.
“The North Fork is a farmland of mesas and plains sheltered by deep wilderness, precipitous canyons, sloping forests, and ragged peaks.”The North Fork is a place in my imagination. It is also a valley in my home state of Colorado. It is a farmland of mesas and plains sheltered by deep wilderness, precipitous canyons, sloping forests, and ragged peaks,” describes Bailey. In his childhood, he would go with his father to the North Fork to visit his family. “My dad’s brother, my aunt, and their seven kids lived there in a large rectangular army tent assembled at the base of a mountain,” he recalls. With a self-sufficient lifestyle and location near a dense forest of juniper trees, the place seemed to be filled with freedom and adventures.
“I marvelled over my cousins’ world and I envied their freedom. It seemed as if they were on a never-ending adventure that was both exciting and terrifying, and — most striking to me — it was an experience shared by their whole family.” However, due to the personal disputes between Bailey’s father and uncle in the visits were not continued. Almost 20 years later, the photographer revisits the location, which over years grew in his imagination to a mystical place and discovers it once again through a series of intimate photographs.
All images © Trent Davis Bailey and Robert Koch Gallery