Falling in Love with a Fly

t’s one thing to fall in love with creatures we consider regal, clever, or sweet, but what about those we’ve learned to swat away? I’ve never liked flies, especially after an encounter years earlier on the great Gariep River, which stretches from South Africa into Namibia. At the time I had begun experimenting with creating land art, which I’d felt drawn to after seeing the work of Andy Goldsworthy. I struggled greatly at first before managing to find my own simple style—placing natural objects like bones, stones, shells, and kelp in patterns on the ground and then photographing them