I love you the more because you flee from me

︎︎︎ Nathan Matteson
︎︎︎ Barbara Raidl
As one stands upon a shore, the horizon is hardly more than five kilometers distant—an achievable jog even for the untrained. And yet were we to make this jog, even if we could run Christ-like across the seas, the horizon would forever retreat from our grasp. It is the very limit of our terrestrial apperception. Just on this side of the horizon is the offing, the staging ground for events that are immanent; and on the other side lies the unknown, the staging ground of the possible and of all that is uncertain.

I love you the more because you flee from me is an ongoing series of photographic records created by Nathan Matteson and Barbara Raidl. Produced with long exposures, typically between 5 minutes and an hour, the end result of each of these images is unknowable at the outset. They are records of uncertainty, anticipation, doubt, and hope—records of events in the act of their unfolding, as the earth turns, as the tides are hauled upwards by the moon, as the world unveils itself in front of the camera.

The title for the project is stolen from Baudelaire, and was discovered by Barbara inside a Baci chocolate while we were traveling in Italy during December 2021.

We shoot Fuji atop a Three Legged Thing


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© 2022 Nathan Matteson & Barbara Raidl
© 2022 Nathan Matteson & Barbara Raidl