Ethan Schlesinger (b. 2002) is a photographer whose work is rooted in the emotional landscape of the American Midwest. Raised in the rural suburban fringes of the region, his upbringing was defined by a particular kind of quiet isolation — a barrenness that left room for little else but introspection and the lingering weight of memory. That formative environment, and the troubling adolescence it held, became the soil from which his visual practice grew.

His work moves through themes of displacement, impermanence, and the body — probing the tension between a constant desire for movement and the stagnancy that so often meets it. Days fold into weeks, into years, into decades. Familiarity is found only in flesh and in a heartbeat. Everything experienced is forever, yet nothing remains the same. The hardwood floors don’t feel the same as the tall grass, but both lie above the same ground.

At the core of Schlesinger’s practice is a belief that the body is never truly alone — that even when stranded, accompanied only by gravel, dirt, and ash, it remains a conductor laid bare to the elements. Our roots, our metaphysical borders, live within skin and bone. We depart, and we return, and the cycle repeats. His photographs inhabit this cycle — suspended between departure and return, between memory and the present moment, between what was and what can no longer be recovered. Once we are frozen over, we return to ash, just as we were made.