Artist Statement: I took this photograph while walking in Loreto, noticing how the painted lines of the crosswalk interrupted the landscape and guided the body forward. The crosswalk became a threshold for me. It marked a moment of movement between where I had been and where I was going, between institutional belonging and personal becoming.
In black and white, the scene shifts from a colourful resort walkway into a study of passage. The ordered stripes of the road meet the uneven textures of stone, palm, and desert plants. I felt the tension between structure and growth, between systems that organize bodies and the quiet, living pathways that emerge beyond them. The path beyond the crosswalk disappears into shade and foliage, suggesting that transition is rarely linear or fully visible.
This image sits within my broader inquiry into trauma, creativity, and place-based learning. Walking, photographing, and noticing have become methods of recovery and research. Each step across the threshold is both an embodied practice and data. The land becomes a co-teacher, offering pathways that invite slowing, noticing, and choosing presence over productivity.
For years, I believed my belonging rested in institutional rhythms, student needs, colleague expectations, and the fragile promise of contract renewal. Standing here, camera in hand, I began to sense another form of belonging. The land does not require performance. It offers passage without evaluation. This crosswalk became a quiet declaration that I can cross into a different relationship with work, place, and self.
This photograph is part of an arts-based research practice that uses walking and photography as methods of witnessing. It documents a moment of transition and asks how thresholds shape identity, memory, and healing.
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