1457: In order to escape the plague, Uccello probably takes refuge on his estate at San Stefano a Ugnano.

This introductory sentence is lifted from a book on Paolo Uccello’s life, an early renaissance artist who shares my last name. His actions seemed to mimic mine, as I put all my plans on hold to shelter in place.

The Transitory is a book collating the first two years of the COVID-19 epidemic—turned pandemic—turned endemic. Early on in this global upheaval, I set my lens on a myriad of difficult themes which appeared to congeal together before me into an unparsable entanglement—the slow but persistent march of entropy, the melding spaces of hometown landscapes, the cyclical experience of the seasons, and the underlying frameworks that slowly shift and rattle beneath us as we balance to keep afloat.