Nature, and how we cohabit with nature, is the subject of my photographs. Vapor trails are a physical phenomenon. At certain altitudes, the jet exhaust of the engine condensates and makes a line of H20 visible in the sky. The atmospheric conditions play with the condensation creating infinite patterns. Each vapor trail also represents an episode of human activity and the hundreds of passengers traveling the sky. Manufactured goods are circling the globe, packages are mailed for next-day deliveries, fruits, vegetables, and ammunition make their way to their final destinations.

On any given day, as we look up, we see multiple trails. One could be walking along the Charles in Cambridge, traveling up the Nile in a boat, sailing in the Mediterranean, or in the China Sea, no matter where one is the sky is criss-crossed. These trails present a symbol of a globalized world and a shrinking, borderless planet. One hundred years ago, it was rivers, sea, and the railways that formed the highways for people in commerce. We have now added the sky, free and flexible, allowing us to travel the shortest routes, defying geography.

While the vapor visually present pure H20 and seem harmless to the environment, they remind us that they are accompanied by burned jet fuel. I am reminded that the beauty observed in the sky has also a price. During a fuel shortage in the past, the question was asked, “Is this trip necessary?” Surely we must now ask, “Is that flight necessary?” for indulging in fruits and vegetables out of season, drinking French spring water in New Zealand and New Zealand spring water in the United States.

My fascination with the trails is to observe the extraordinary and unpredictable beauty of pattern, a vivid demonstration of chaos theory, where winds, temperature, and other atmospheric conditions act upon a vapor emission, and over a brief period of time create wiggles, arches, fractal patterns, or simply disintegrating to merge into the clouds, all to slowly diminish and disappear to nothingness. Like all patterns in nature, the waves in the sea, the formation and disintegration of ice on the river, we are mesmerized, transfixed, as we observe the endless possibilities. At the same time, we are reminded of our own activity and mark on these patterns.