Wilderness Within is a celebration of transformation — both sudden and steady, wild and wondrous. A platinum palladium print exhibition by Jon Dragonette, photographed in the Adirondack Mountains with a 4×5 film camera. What started in solitude, with a camera in hand, became a conversation between inner and outer wilderness. The mountain tests the body, but solitude tests the mind. This work explores the intersection of nature and self, not as a project, but as a need, to step outside the noise and into a landscape vast enough to hold questions I couldn’t yet name.
The Wilderness Within is a Platinum Palladium print exhibition shot on 4×5 film in the Adirondack Mountains. Born in the stillness of winter and the quiet ache of personal transformation, it began not as a project, but as a need, to step outside the noise, into a landscape vast enough to hold questions I couldn’t yet name.
What started in solitude, with a camera in hand, became a conversation between inner and outer wilderness. The mountain tests the body, but solitude tests the mind. The rush of cold air on my face as I opened the door was the first reminder—I was no longer in the city, but back in the mountains of my youth. As I climbed through the dark, my warm breath haunted the frozen air, drifting upward like a ghost. The silence of the forest was only broken by my heartbeat, thudding steadily as my legs burned and my lungs caught fire. Thoughts rise and fall like the trail head, about life, love, loss, fear, resilience. And somewhere in that noise, I’d begin to discover something new, something about my own strength and the quiet perseverance it takes to move through difficulty. In the act of making a photograph, everything would go quiet. The camera gave me a way to listen, to reflect, and to begin making sense of what I was carrying.
This work explores the intersection of nature and self, the ways in which the land can challenge and heal us, and how, when we let it, it teaches us what it means to be both fragile and strong. It’s about what happens when we let discomfort strip us bare, when we surrender to the slowness of the trail, when we choose to see rather than to escape. In that surrender, clarity emerges, not an answer, but a deeper way of being with the questions.
