My father, and his mother before him, loved the ocean. My dad was the only person I've known to bodysurf the waves, sans board. My grandmother swam every day, a slow, methodical freestyle that left us puzzled as to how she stayed afloat.

After losing my father, I return to the ocean with my camera, again and again, to remember. I trace the shoreline, a place of perpetual flux. Creatures cling to rocks, waiting for the salt water to rouse them back to life. Others wash up onto the sand in final surrender. Life and death aren't separate enterprises here; low tide bears on its breath as much decay as vitality. The water carries us gently on its back before it pulls us soundlessly under.

I surrender to the same waters that bore my ancestors. I watch for light along the coast; my dad always said he could tell the time of day in my mother's paintings of the Maine shoreline. I open myself to moments when memories of him alight, and time seems to expand—some mysterious place where the cosmos is felt. I explore opacity and light, layer and surface as metaphors for the unknown and the fallibility of memory.