Chris Hancock Donaldson

The first title for the project below was Passing Time, Camping. I loved it because every time I said it out loud, I thought about one of my favourite photobooks by Robert Adams.

I’m also all about passing time — camping, exploring a landscape, daydreaming on a stoop, hanging with my dog, listening to music and birds. But lately the passing time I’ve been doing has been growing wings. And with that brings new vantage points: like the wasp nibbling on a cherry in the tree above my head, the shadows of starlings drifting across the lawn, the tendrils of a grape vine slowly wrapping themselves around a stable structure. Time nourishes, passes, makes new paths.

For much of my life, my relationship with time has been experienced in my head. I’ve wanted to stretch time, avoid time, perform time, imagine time, burn time. But what does it mean to inhabit time? That became the question behind this project.

For me, inhabiting time is most akin to inhabiting a life. Paying attention instead of anticipating. Allowing myself to notice what is already here. Stepping out of the habit of thought to savour experience, and using nature as my guide.

The pause before the tide turns, a breath held, the quiet after a fire, an ocean beckoning for deeper exploration, a hammock waiting. Time as a series of thresholds. What can happen when I see time end and begin again?

A forest can burn in one afternoon, while another heals over decades. Time moves at different speeds. This project made me realize that every kind of time belongs: time for grief, renewal, joy, hiding, sparks, ashes, transformation.

The question isn’t how long I spend in any one moment. It’s how I inhabit the one I’m in.

August 2026