The Shepherd’s Daughter by Clare Benson

Growing up within a family of hunters, Benson wanted to document her sister and her father trekking through the Alaskan wilderness, carrying the spoils of their hunting expeditions on their backs.

She explained: "Before my father, my grandmother was a hunter and before that my great-grandmother, and long before that the stars made up constellations that told stories of the greatest hunts. In my work, the nuances of hunting and the rugged northern Michigan landscape of my childhood are woven with narratives of genealogy and gender, memory and mythology, time and space.

"My creative language is one of metaphors, and my studio work suggests connections between things that may not, on a surface level, seem to be related. Relationships and contradictions exist on microcosmic and macrocosmic levels: the earth vs. the sun, mother vs. father, man vs. nature, human vs. the universe. Through photography, video, sculpture, and writing, my research manifests into work that combines elements of science, nature, and personal history."