New Years has come with fog. I am grateful for the softness. It has been a harrowing year, and the clouds’ descent onto the streets brings an ambiguity of shapes and a gentleness that is much needed. On my evening walk as dusk settled into the woods and gardens, I felt Wallace Stevens with me, looking at the blackbird differently. As a photographer I am not a purist. I relish the ability to quickly consider a scene “as it is” and “as it might be”, and to experiment with how mood shifts with simple additions and subtractions of color. I do not build my editioned prints using pre-set filters. But I find the on-the-fly technology in my pocket a miraculous tool both for sketching ideas and embracing the cinematic moment. The political and personal mayhem of the past year created an urgency of mood that has often called for transformation. The act of photographing offers the relief of distance, and also, paradoxically, intimacy, as the world shrinks to size of one’s hand.
Mary Geddry may have summarized 2025 best in her soliloquy last night:
“This past year asked far too much of all of us. It demanded attention without offering relief, resilience without rest, and clarity in a fog of bad faith. Yet here we are, still watching, still caring, still insisting that truth matters and that the future is something we participate in, not just endure. In itself, that is no small thing.”
The complications of photographic and political “truth,” of course, have multiplied exponentially with the proliferation of AI, and state control of the media.
Perhaps the most satisfying visual work of the year has been my ongoing stationery series. I released the Forest Series as cards and prints, which brought together my advocacy for tree preservation with fine art botanicals. At the Building C Holiday Open House I collaborated with Tree Action Seattle to offer one of the larger prints as a fundraiser. River Light immediately found a home with a collector, and brought the organization a matching grant from the Seattle Parks Foundation. I also created a new series for the winter season called The Book of Hours, starring the Chrysanthemum, an elegant specimen that has become a new favorite.
New Years Day finds me deep in travel planning, one of the most hopeful ways to embrace the season. I will be exploring Ireland for the first time, and then the edge of Wales, with an eye to new landscape and architectural work. It has been deeply satisfying to see the response to the work from England, begun in St. Ives and completed in a 6 week state of euphoric focus when I returned. In August I will be taking my camera and sketchbook and looking, as before, for those reveries of place that take us both back in time and out of time.
Perhaps I will come across the Irish stile my mother photographed there sometime in the 1980’s. When she was in Ireland she sent a postcard saying it was too green. When she went to Vermont in the fall she wrote to say it was too red— and there were too many leaves. When she took me to Europe when I was 15 she said there was too much God. But when we found a simple church on a hill and walked through the door into whitewash and well worn wood she was content. This, she said, is a praying church. I look forward to meeting her there, somewhere on a hill in Connemara.
2026 can only be better than 2025! I wish you light and good cheer in the new year. If things get dim, get in touch and we will reimagine.
All images and writing with the exception of the citation from Mary Geddry © Iskra Johnson 2026 and may not be reproduced without permission.
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