Four seasons, six children in photographs

Jesse Lenz’s new collection of photographs, The Seraphim, opens with a striking image: A child stands facing away from the camera, hair caught in the wind, gazing out at a forbidding landscape. The frame is caught—about to advance, as if it’s a movie playing out; it holds the promise of an unfolding moment. This opening captures the overarching theme of the book, which explores the wonder of life and the rhythms of nature through the lens of childhood.

Lenz spent four years documenting his six children against the backdrop of their farm in rural Ohio. These are not sweet images of children in nature: “I don’t think about children (or childhood) as innocent,” he told me. “Having six, you certainly know they are not.” Lenz views nature as a place for children to discover a sense of wonder and mystery—and the essential element of danger: “Nature has always been what teaches humans first about the cycle of life, death, and rebirth. It is where we are tested, where we experience the numinous, and where we are confounded.”

Lenz, the son of a preacher, had childhood dreams filled with “prophecy, angels and demons, and sin and salvation.” Throughout the book, the creatures of the farm become both ominous figures and mystical companions. In one frame, a child and an owl stare directly into the camera; in another, the same child clutches a stuffed owl, blurring the lines between reality and fiction. “When I am editing images, I am looking for moments that feel like they transcend this time or plane of existence. Small moments that offer a critique of human rationality and encourage us to open ourselves up to the transcendent and mysterious,” Lenz explained. He’s interested in that liminal space between the mythical and real, the hidden and the seen.

The book concludes with the imprint of wings etched in the snow. The photographs capture the fleeting nature of childhood and its enchantments, disappearing as quickly as the snow melts.