Diving into the pages of Somersault feels like eavesdropping on a dialogue; a delicate, cautious interaction where every word is weighted and hard to get out. There is a daughter at the peak of that inevitable time of transition at the end of high school, going through a whirlwind of dizziness, wanderlust, apprehension, eagerness to grow, fear to leave home (and everything that it means) behind. And there is a father, observing his kid as she is slowly and awkwardly entering adulthood, preparing himself to let go and deal with her imminent departure. In Somersault, Raymond Meeks’ last photobook, his seventeen-year-old daughter Abbey appears alongside glimpses of domestic landscapes shot around their home during the days of that last summer before college.

“We live our lives in widening circles,” writes Meeks “As a father, I always felt it was important to instill a profound sense of place. […] I photograph close to home as memory loses structure, its architecture, trying to make light speak from the fixed edges of rooms long vanished.” Filtered by a misty and dreamy atmosphere, stilt houses hidden among majestic trees alternate with images of suspended bridges, river bends, railroads, tangles of dry bushes, bent tree branches—almost like extensions of their house environment or emotions. As life-long witnesses of the passage of time, they convey the longing, hidden sadness, and unsettling sense of waiting that both the father and daughter share. Magnolia trees and fields of wild daisies delicately remind us, and them, of the coming and permanent change.