Lauren Grabelle has aways photographed the liminal: The edge of civilization, the spaces between where human and animals live.
In her new photo series, “Deer Diary,” Grabelle invites us into that space once again — but this time, she steps aside and lets the deer take the lead.
Using a motion-triggered trail camera in the Montana backcountry, Grabelle captures what she calls a “collaboration” between photographer and subject. The images are grainy, infrared and startling — deer paused midstep in a clearing, antlers glowing, eyes flaring white in the darkness.
These aren’t wildlife photos in the traditional sense. They’re less about animal behavior than presence: what it means to be watched and to watch back.
By placing her camera along game trails and under barbed fences bent by repetition, Grabelle taps into a story older than photography. The deer in these images belong to the same lineage that once appeared in cave paintings and creation myths. They are messengers, omens, sometimes deities. But they are also neighbors, sharing the land just out of sight, often just out of mind.
With “Deer Diary,” Grabelle invites us to slow down and look again. To recognize that the stories we tell about animals are always, in part, stories about ourselves. —Jesse Hyde
This story appears in the July/August 2025 issue of Deseret Magazine. Learn more about how to subscribe.
