Joel Whitaker explores the transitory nature of experiences with a body of work inspired by a series of tornados that moved through the American South, several years ago, in a single day. Whitaker’s connection to this place and the event is peripheral, but nonetheless powerful. As a result of these storms, and the realization that this was an event witnessed and not experienced, he set out to make not a literal document of the damage, but rather, photographs that explore the idea of losing things—the transitory nature of all things. In the resulting photographs, the presumed narrative qualities, or the anecdotal aspects of the photographs, do not interest Whitaker but more the “picture” qualities, the poetic, and the open-ended gray areas of significance in the photographs—the space between recognition and acceptance.