Welcome to Bracken.

Lake of the Clouds Hut near the Mt Washington Summit. © Bracken by Kimberly Kaufman

For a long time, I thought I needed to choose.

Photographer.
Writer.
Herbalist.
Maker.

Everyone kept telling me to niche down. Pick a lane. Build a brand.

So I did, over and over again.

I built separate places for separate parts of myself. Photography lived here. Herbal work lived there. Writing was tucked away somewhere else.

But that way of operating never felt right for me.

Because I don't experience these things as separate.

The same part of me that wants to photograph the way light moves across someone's face wants to know the name of the plant growing beside the trail. The same part of me that creates an herbal blend wants to write about grief, or love, or the strange experience of being alive. I want to photograph people and climb mountains and make things with my hands and tell stories about all of it.

Bracken came from finally letting all of those things belong to the same world.

I don't know exactly what that world will become. But I know what I want it to hold.

Photographs of people and wild places. Stories and field notes. Things gathered, grown and made. The work I create for other people, and the work I make simply because something in me needs to make it.

But for once, I'm not interested in cutting pieces of myself away just to make what I do easier to define.

So, this is Bracken.

It's live.

And for the first time in a long time, my work feels like it belongs somewhere.