A Backwards Blessing

Short Creek, Utah and Arizona, 2022

With William Casey and Collin Serigne

Made on 4x5 film, processed and scanned at LSMSA.

I first heard Donia Jessop on a podcast about Short Creek, the twin towns of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Arizona. I emailed her, and she invited me out. In 2022 my former LSMSA students William Casey and Collin Serigne, both now graduates of Tufts University and the SMFA, came along as interns. We spent more than a week getting to know the people.

Many of them had been cast out under Warren Jeffs, the leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. After Jeffs went to prison, they came back to reclaim their homes and their land. They share a bond that comes from that.

I kept thinking of Adam, sent out of the only place he knew. The people I met had to make their way in the wider world, and they came back level-headed. One resident called the town’s hard past a backwards blessing: what it left behind could make Short Creek a jewel of the Southwest. I admire their mental strength and practical knowledge. These photographs are about a community rebuilding itself on its own terms.

Some photographs by William Casey.