I read Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, by Shunryu Suzuki, and some other articles on Zen Buddhism during the worst months of the Covid-19 pandemic. From these readings, the Zen Buddhist concept of viewing time as an illusion of the mind instead of a continuously spooling reality resonated most strongly with me. Living alone in a small apartment and staring at electronic screens for most of the time, I felt that my days and nights all seemed to blur together under the same grey ceiling. I started to doubt the truthfulness of my daily experiences, memories, dreams, and imagination. I felt lost on the space-time scale of my existence. The rooftop of my building became my sanctuary. I needed to fully expose myself to the sun and feel its rays building up the heat on the surface of my skin to confirm that I was alive again.

Later, I carried my camera to the rooftop and challenged myself to take photos that reflect my feelings at the moment and my thoughts on time through a tactile and meditative approach. I developed a method of using cyanotype coated paper as film negatives to take long-exposure photos of the sun and reflections of the sun with a 4x5 large format film camera. The resulting prints bear markings of the sun, from etched burns and holes to traces of its path in the skyline of Chicago. Collectively, they become my personal sungazing dairy, recording my most inappreciable attempt to grasp the ever-elapsing time.