Megalith Zero

Maureen Drennan

Ain’t Bad Press

Meet Me in the Green Glen is an intimate photographic look at a reclusive marijuana grower in California. He was an isolated man whose environment was both ominous and verdant. We met several years ago and through this project became close. I photographed him for nine years while the laws and stigma around marijuana cultivation changed radically in California. This farmer, Ben, was growing marijuana for years before it was legal and had to carefully navigate within the legal system to grow, maintain, sell, and transport his product. Although marijuana is legal to grow and use within guidelines, there are situations in which it is still illegal. It continues to be a murky world.

American Literature has a significant influence on my imagery. I am drawn to narratives, photographic, literary, cinematic, or documentary- in which characters are crafted out of place, or in which places actively become the characters themselves.

Maureen R. Drennan is a photographer born and based in New York City. Her work has been included in exhibitions at the National Portrait Gallery, Aperture, Mrs. Gallery, Transmitter, Centotto Gallery, Silvereye Center for Photography, Center for Photography at Woodstock, and the Tacoma Art Museum. Her images have been featured in The New Yorker, The New York Times, California Sunday Magazine, Photograph Magazine, Art 21 Magazine, Huffington Post, Refinery 29, Narratively, NewestYork, and the Economic Hardship Reporting Project. She teaches at LaGuardia Community College and the School of Visual Arts in New York.