Time, layers, nostalgia, longing. Space, light, the patina of wear. The luminosity that comes when a surface is burnished by time. Nicks, scrapes and scars. A record of the small every-day outrageousness of being alive in the world.

This series was created using photographs from a life-changing six months I spent living and making art in Puebla, Mexico when I was twenty years old. The images hidden under the surface of the painted collages document a time of extraordinary magic and aliveness in my life, my first real experience of living, learning and creating on my own terms. Decades later, my day-to-day existence has changed in every conceivable way, but fragments and memories of that time still pulse vividly under the surface.

The title of the series, “Invisible Cities,” comes from a book by the same name by Italo Calvino which I read while living in Mexico. Page after page, the lyricism of Calvino’s mediations on longing and place gave me a glimpse into that rarest of experiences: feeling acutely nostalgic for a present moment as it unfolds in realtime. The book acted as a portal, offering me a view of my imaginary grown-up self looking back with yearning for those days of sun-blasted landscapes, burgeoning creativity and new friendships and collaborations I sensed even then would last a lifetime.

I’ve become the grown-up I imagined—rough around the edges and well on my way to a fine patina. But my twenty-year-old self got one thing wrong: the future nostalgia I innocently thought I could envision back then doesn’t hold a candle to how it actually feels now. The cities of my youth have become truly invisible to everyone but me—a reality both more searing and sweet than my young self could have dreamed.