One night, my mother saw a man walk across the field and into the trees. Startled, my mother came inside and told us what she saw. She said, "he looked like he was from the 70s." We turned on the floodlights and went outside to see if the man was still around. We saw and heard nothing out of the ordinary in the tree lines. The man looked nothing like our few neighbors. I listened to my mother's words, but without seeing this event for myself, I couldn't help but wonder what was seen: the shadows playing tricks, a man walking across our land, or perhaps the paranormal.
In the dark, the mind has a habit of turning ordinary things into the unsightly: the coat rack with a hat at the top becomes a man with the slightest flick of light, two dots of white in an open field transforms into a beast watching you. Our eyes reveal what we presume to be fact, and the mind molds it into fiction.
Specter is a series of nightly explorations on the same plot of land where my mother saw the man. After night falls, I cross the ground with my camera and a light in hand as my guide. The light reveals the truth and tempts deception. Traversing the property, I am searching for the line between fact and lie that exists in the obscurations of the night. Maybe one night, I will see the man.