Tales of Tulum

There was a pull toward Tulum that wouldn’t quiet down.

It began with a saved image: a coastline I couldn’t stop thinking about. An overwhelming feeling that I needed to stand there, see the ruins for myself, and photograph them in my own way. Four weeks later, a gap opened in my calendar and I booked flights to Mexico on instinct.

The journey there became part of the work.

At Sydney airport, I discovered I needed a US ESTA visa for a route that passed through Los Angeles. I hadn’t realised. The trip seemed over before it began. There was, however, an unusual first leg: Sydney to Brisbane - an inconvenience I’d been annoyed about when booking, though that hour in the air became the margin that saved everything. I boarded anyway, knowing I would forfeit the entire journey if the 11th hour visa application didn’t come through, and I spent the flight bargaining with the universe, hoping something unseen was on my side. I really feel I am meant to be in Mexico here and now. If this is to be, please grant me the visa.

The approval arrived the moment the plane landed, and what felt like a logistical glitch became an opening - time granted.

The photographs in this series, including Templo del Dios del Viento I, II and III, were made on the first day, after a twenty-eight hour journey across continents, at the ruins along the coastline - in that heightened state between exhaustion and awe.

Tulum, here, is not treated as a postcard destination. It becomes a study of space felt in the body - exposure, air, stillness, and exhale. These works explore the meeting point between ancient structure and infinite sky, between the physical world and something less visible that guides us toward certain places, for reasons only understood later.

This series is a study in answering a call to go, to look. and to be present long enough for the landscape to speak back.