It took me twenty-five years to make it to San Luis. I kept circling back to the idea of that place, the wide valley, the way the horizon breathes, and yet for years I couldn’t quite get myself there. When I finally did, I realized it wasn’t just about geography.

Photography opened up my access to intuition. The photographs weren’t premeditated; they were instantaneous seeing and somatic reaction. San Luis does that to me. The picture itself serves as a kind of visual frame for wordless emotions, or maybe only partially worded thoughts that were circling around in my head at the time. I didn’t go there to prove a point. I went because something in me wanted to stop thinking and just look.

It also reminded me that the work of seeing is slow. It took twenty-five years to arrive, but the real movement happened inside me long before the trip. San Luis still teaches that: the distance between knowing and understanding, between looking and truly seeing.

I remember standing in that vast openness, the light flattening everything and yet revealing layers I couldn’t name. Seeing myself, or maybe the camera, in a much bigger landscape than I had imagined that was both exciting and a bit daunting. It marked a turning point for me, a moment when taking a photograph turned into being fully present for one.

When I look at the image now, I see both distance and return. The horizon pulls you out, but it also invites you back in. San Luis keeps reminding me that intuition has its own pace, that clarity comes slowly, and that sometimes the longest journeys are interior.