Growing up, Coal Cut Road was the only road in Illinois that I ever really knew. Down that road lived my grandparents and a majority of my childhood was spent there. If you go down that road far enough today, you can still hear the fading stories once told by my grandfather and my father, many of which were unbelievable but true. Although my grandfather and my father have been gone since 2001, the memories still remain down Coal Cut Road. The photographs within this book have little to do with that road but everything to do with it at the same time. I have felt an emptiness in my heart for years, an emptiness that I have never truly figured out how to fill. This photo book is about loss and the effect that loss has on a loved one. Whether that loss be through death or simply from a person exiting your life in some other way or another, we all grieve that loss in our own way. The photographs within this book are my voice and they tell my story.


-L. Paul