Photographer Gardner Mounce is currently working on his first photography book, Vanishing Twin, a project that began in 2021 and explores both the physical and internal landscapes of the artist. This body of work emerged from a period of profound transformation in Mounce’s life, coinciding with his return to his hometown of Memphis, Tennessee, during the pandemic and a subsequent diagnosis of a chronic illness that upended every aspect of his existence.
The impact of the illness was devastating: extreme exhaustion confined him to his home for weeks, stripping him of the ability to travel, write, play music, or even see friends and family. Immobilized in bed, his sense of identity gradually faded, making it impossible for him to recognize his former life. After months of research—carried out largely by his wife—Mounce found a treatment that allowed him to regain some stability, though his health remained fragile.
This experience profoundly shaped his artistic practice, leading him to rediscover photography, a passion he had abandoned since his college years. Vanishing Twin focuses on abandoned locations throughout the Mid-South, capturing them with a sensitivity that enhances their dreamlike and eerie qualities. The pervasive sense of neglect in these spaces mirrors Mounce’s own feelings of abandonment, left at the mercy of a healthcare system that too often dismisses chronic illnesses as psychological conditions.
Using long exposures, laser pointers, flashlights, and flashes, Mounce transforms rural landscapes in Arkansas, Tennessee, and Mississippi into images suspended between dream and decay. His work invites viewers to step into a rarefied world where the boundary between reality and dissolution is blurred, evoking the sensation of inhabiting a liminal space between presence and absence, between life and oblivion.
