Conceptually instant photography has been utilized to record exactly that, a quick documentation of a passing moment but often that moment is just the surface. Cutting through the mask-like primary layer leads to unearthing the interiors of time, exposing a teetering of truths and lies, light versus dark, success and failures. These become psychological experiences that we preserve or destroy, expose or cover, and eventually what reemerges is a process of amending memory with footnotes. These pieces take into consideration the classic idea of the American Pastoral portrayed ad nauseam in Hudson River School paintings. A region in New York where I grew up and currently reside. Beneath the surface of the vivid bucolic idea of America exists something darker, smoke from a fire which at this point, we cannot put out.