Meet Me in the Green Glen
The Photography of Maureen Drennan
Maureen R. Drennan is well acquainted with Mary Jane. In the early 1990s, long before her photography career began to take shape, she worked as a bike messenger for one of NYC’s first weed delivery services. She started out zipping around the city—“weed in my backpack, piercings in my nose and eyebrows, and paranoia in my heart”—before working her way through the ranks to dispatcher. She took orders and paged messengers with codes; “Like a cannabis air traffic controller,” Drennan jokes.
So in 2008, when she met a reclusive cannabis farmer named Ben, she was well aware of the need for some discretion. Ben and Drennan’s friendship began in a clothing store, where she teased him for sipping a can of beer while shopping, and endured until Ben’s passing in 2017.
Over the course of nine years, Drennan made semi-frequent visits to Ben's sprawling, heavily secured grow that operated out of the sequestered countryside.
As a native New Yorker, she is often drawn to photograph these kinds of settings—tight-knit communities in out-of-the-way places, quiet rhythms from worlds far-removed.
“What interests me are the subtleties, contradictions, and beauty tucked into lives that are often overlooked,” she says. It was that quiet surreality of Ben’s life that captured her interest and became the inspiration for this collection: Meet Me in the Green Glen.
“What drew me in initially was Ben’s outsider status, his unconventional lifestyle, and the complex world of growing and distributing weed,” Drennan recalls. “My work often explores themes of isolation, resilience, and the complexity of place, blending portraiture with landscapes to tell stories. I try to explore these spaces with an intimate, slow, atmospheric approach, and there’s often a cinematic quality to my images, but they remain grounded,” she explains. “My early images reflect that focus, centered on the farm, the routines, the workers, and the plants—all from a time when growing weed still had that rebellious, outlaw feel. When we first met, Ben didn’t want to be photographed, only the farm—clear insight into his pride.”
"I respected that. But when I returned a few months later, I told him what fascinated me wasn't just the cannabis operation, but him, the person behind it. I promised never to put him at risk, and he chose to trust me. Over the years, I photographed him with that understanding at the core of our collaboration.”
And the project began to evolve. As Ben and Drennan spent more time together, the images changed. They include intimate portraits of him in bed and misty, dream-like landscapes that spoke to his solitude.
Soon enough, Drennan was considered a member of the family. “I spent a lot of time listening to Ben and the crew, and through their stories and daily routines, I picked up a fair amount about cultivation and the complicated logistics of running a cannabis farm, especially one that had operated off the books for most of its life. The farm was basically Fort Knox for pot, wrapped in fences and rigged with motion detectors so sensitive they’d go off if a squirrel even thought about sneezing. It wasn’t anywhere near a city, so at night it was pitch black and dead quiet. Whenever a detector went off, which was often, the whole crew would spring into action: flashlights blazing, dogs barking like it was the end of the world, and everyone charging into the darkness… only to discover a deer casually strolling by.”
Despite the false alarms, she maintains that the workers took very alert seriously. "They knew the stakes. Months of labor could vanish overnight if the farm was robbed. And just to keep them on their toes—or maybe for his own amusement—Ben would often sneak up and scare the hell out of them,” Drennan remembers fondly.
“He loved to tell me stories from his life and I loved to hear them. Whether they were true or not never really mattered to me. What he shared felt intimate and confessional, offering glimpses into who he was beneath the surface,” Drennan continues. “I’m drawn to people who live a little off the grid, those slightly removed from the mainstream. I try to understand them by stepping into their worlds, both physically and emotionally.”
Her hope is that the work doesn’t only document a time and place, but also invites viewers to reflect and maybe even see a bit of themselves in these corners of the world. “My photos are about connecting with others and listening to people’s stories,” she says. “They would not exist without the kindness and trust of strangers.”
