Jenny Riffle’s photographs of the Pacific Northwest are both beautiful and frightening. The landscape feels haunted and each scene that plays out before her camera is swollen with tension. Ants swarm up a woman’s arm, the mist crawls across trees in the forest, a man swings an axe. Her images are a visceral telling of the place where she spent her childhood.

“The Sound of Wind is a rediscovery of the Pacific Northwest through my memories of growing up there and my present experiences. I took for granted my surroundings until I left home and lived elsewhere. Every time I came back I would see it with new eyes. It seemed that every place I went contained some memory of childhood forgotten and unappreciated. After moving back to the northwest I started photographing the landscape and the people inhabiting it.

There is a captivating beauty here that inspires people, and there is also a darkness. I am drawn to the places in between dreams and reality, somewhere between memory and the present experience. I walk around and look out into the woods, seeing them anew and seeing them through the veil of memories at the same time. I look up at the moss covered branches and I remember nights spent sleeping outside in the dark looking up to see a thousand hairy spider legs instead of branches and quickly hiding under the covers. I remember ants crawling all over my feet and my father trying to calm me down, telling me that the ants will not bite. Unknown forces of nature can be terrifying, but they can also be profoundly beautiful. It is this balance that draws me to photograph the Pacific Northwest.” -Jenny Riffle

View more of Jenny Riffle’s work on her website.