My work is rooted in the Gothic Revival and Dark Romantic traditions of 19th-century paintings: a visual world that does not shy away from death but contemplates it through a spectrum of emotions and visuals. Where most turn away from mortality, I find it a necessary reminder of how beautiful life is. Sitting with the inevitability of death is not an act of morbid indulgence, but an act of acceptance.

Fear, Breathe, Return is the architecture of that belief expressed in photography. The series moves through three movements: the visceral anxiety of mortality — captured through symbols of religious uncertainty, aging, grief, and supernatural interpretations of the unknown — toward something quieter and more sustaining. Borrowing from the broader Romantic tradition, I use the beauty of the natural world as a path toward accepting fate. To stand before something alluring and eternal is to be reminded that death is not merely a loss of self-experience or companionship, but a rightful return to the universe that created us.

My photographs ask viewers to slow down, to take notice, and to practice the kind of mindfulness that mortality quietly demands of us.

Chasen is a self-taught photographer based in Atlanta, Georgia and photographs exclusively with 35mm film. He was born in Destin Florida and holds a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics. His work encourages one to practice mindfulness through immersion in nature as a response to the frightening inevitability of death. He has a penchant for clouds and moonscapes and has dedicated most of his technical learning to expose those scenes to achieve a signature look. For technical execution, Chasen employs both film double exposure and digital editing of film assets to achieve image compositing. He is deeply inspired by practical visual effects from classic motion pictures, such as the use of optical film printing for image compositing, and employs double exposures whenever possible to achieve the vision. He is currently developing a body of work that uses no digital compositing at all and instead relies on classic visual effect techniques.