The last time I posted an update—well over a year ago—I said I’d be sharing stories from Japan, where I hoped to shake off the post-pandemic malaise of middle age. That didn’t happen as planned. But I did spend a good part of the summer in Central Europe.

I did a lot of photography while I was there—including AURA, a conceptual photo-text work made from images I shot in Vienna and ideas I worked through while living quietly in Hungary, reading Walter Benjamin and thinking about how we see and remember art.