The Boy in the Wild Orchard

Made on Ben’s home of Vashon Island in the Puget Sound, The Boy in the Wild Orchard begins with vulnerable reflections on the fragmentation and isolation of his young adulthood. He recalls nights spent crumpled on the ground, as a boy in a man’s body, in front of his mentor’s woodstove dying of shame. The work expands as he did, using the camera as a practice and meditation, a connector to hearts, and a vessel to the soul. The project studies his mentors, of which some are human, some more-than-human, some mere light flares dancing among the ferns. Ben states: “I saw all of my teachers standing with their roots planted deep in the earth, their bodies enrobed in green mantles of moss and lichen. I entered this wild orchard as a boy. Its branches held me and its fruit nourished me. In the wild orchard, I found my soul.”