Elise Walking Away

The images in this gallery are photographs of my wife Sharon Elise Dunn. We travel throughout the Western United States photographing in deserts, mountains, seaside, cities, industrial areas and anywhere on the road.

About This Project: These are photographs of my wife, Sharon Elise Dunn.

Elise Walking Away is a project that conveys the stamp a person leaves on a setting, however fleeting, and invites the viewer to become that person. The woman in the pictures is an icon, a person in a moment, experiencing the world slowly and more fully than is often common in our fast-paced world. Always dressed in similar clothes, Elise is an explorer, a representative, not any specific woman. By photographing her in environments that often seem incongruous to her attire, I am highlighting her character’s desire to implant herself through her mere presence in locations that are separated by their geography, architecture, and function. She might be in the desert or on a gritty city street—the setting becomes a part of her, and she a part of it. Elise is always dressed the roughly the same, her attire varying only with the weather, and she is always shot from the side or rear, a figure connected with a place, any place. Is she passing judgment, or just passing through? Asking questions or unconcerned about answers? Never showing her face allows me to draw the viewer into the photograph: enter through Elise and see differently. Go into the picture with her or instead of her: what do you see?