Ozark Life There is a steady cadence to life in the Arkansas Ozarks. The seasons dictate changes in the everyday that become a source of comfort throughout each week and year. The winter winds bring in a sudden flurry of snow as the fire inside warms the house and deer meat cooks on the stove with potatoes from the garden. The first morel mushrooms prepare to surface in spring as the neighbor kids practice for opening youth turkey hunt. The mud puddles swell with early summer rain as the meat chickens arrive at butchering weight and schools get close to letting out for summer.
Ozark Life weaves together the story of my family with the lives of people in our community. It’s a long term documentary project started in 2016 that examines our connection to this land and the roots we have on it, which grow deeper with every generation. Rancher Will Norton can point to the earth under his feet and say his granddad’s dad farmed the same soil where he now raises his family and his cattle. My family is the first generation to live here, but it already feels as though the trees around our home have begun to know our children’s names.
This project has been a way for me to embrace the slow and quiet beauty that I’ve always been drawn to – those small moments unfolding all around us on any given day. The ever changing light and fleeting scenes of adventure, like the tarantula that crawled across my daughter’s bare foot in the yard, and then through a series of events, planted itself on our neighbor’s head. I’ve come to understand the steady underlying rhythm of life here as the heartbeat of the hills. It’s something a person who calls this place home comes to feel, and Ozark Life is my heart’s attempt at capturing that in photographs.
Articles & Exhibitions featuring Terra's Ozark Life project Festival of Ethical Photography, Ozark Life gallery in 'The Lives of Others' exhibit - Lodi, Italy Sept/Oct 2024
Missouri State University - Ozark Life gallery in 'Homelands' exhibit - Springfield, Missouri; March 2024
Blue Sky Gallery (Oregon Center for Photographic Arts) Exhibition - Portland, Oregon; February 2024
Courrier International April 2022
Lensculture Interview July 2021
Bitter Southerner March 2020 -- Terra's fav! Washington Post March 2020
Huck Magazine January 2020
It's Nice That November 2019
Arkansas Life Magazine February 2019
