365 Challenge #270, Curtesy of James Hion

Hi, I’m Mitch.

I am a Woodland Hill, UT based photographer who practices photography as a fine art. I have been passionate about making art ever since I could hold a pencil. However, after decades of drawing and painting, I could never fully comprehend why I felt compelled to make art. It was an obligation I never understood.

To me photography is not just about looking, but it is about seeing. It is about mindfully listening to the Earth and all of its creatures and translating those voices through a lens onto a physical print. I am most interested in traditional and alternative process applications like large format view cameras, contact printing, and glass plate photography. The spirituality and connected feeling one has to the medium is very powerful. This is why I enjoy the large and slow cameras, which are simple and often produce a unique character not possible with any other form of photographic means.

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In 2020, a corrective brain surgery was able to put an end to the seizures that had constantly plagued Mitchell for almost his whole life. In physical rehab, Mitchell had to relearn how to walk, talk, and eat. With almost two months spent in the hospital, a significant shift in artistic approach was seizing him.

No longer held down by crippling epileptic seizures, Mitchell feels like a new man. The world, no longer fogged from heavy medication, now is intensely colorful and powerfully vibrant. Mitchell now feels like he is finally experiencing life (and art) through a clean lens. Sounds are clearer, taste is sweeter, and love, more pure.

Life, once dull without clear meaning, now is about defining the self. Art, once a way to fill the emptiness within, now the means to celebrate the experiences of our being…

Check out Brain on Fire for more details my story in recovery.