Eyes from the Ashes
Photography is a powerful tool. How many people take pictures every day, hoping to capture bits of life as it happens? People treasure photos as access points to their memories. Most of us did not experience World War II concentration camps, yet we can have knowledge of them, both intellectual and visual. Our most referenced sources of knowing are historical records, written and oral histories, and powerful pictur...
Catching Glimpses of the Commonplace
Have you ever thought that you need photographs to prove your experiences because your stories are not enough? Horrible storytellers, like me, rely on images to tell our tales, both ordinary and extraordinary. Typically, the best spoken stories involve uncommon events: strange encounters with the homeless or rescuing an outrageously drunken friend from his demise. But what about the ordinary, the everyday moments ...
Caught and Taught
One of the creative venues in which I dwell is photography. Dare I call myself a photographer? I did until I read a post on Rodney Smith’s blog in which he wonders, “If I am a photographer in the first place (which is extremely questionable with great aspirations, and I know one when I see it, but whether I have achieved the Holy Grail of being a photographer is a whole other matter) . . . ” If Rodney Smith, wh...
The Beautiful Beach: A Photo Essay
It is May 7, 2011 — a Saturday. We drive forty-five minutes south to Dauphin Island. This will be the last time we will visit the Gulf of Mexico before moving away. It had been more than a year since the BP oil spill. Last summer we didn’t go to the beach at all. My husband Adam got a part-time job doing EMS standby for those working to clean up the shores. He said time and again that it wasn’t that bad wher...
Laid Bare: Snow, Photography and Truth
The notions of nature are lonely photographs. Think about it for a moment. How does one go about describing nature? Where does one begin? What does one include? Perhaps more importantly, where does one end their portrayal? For instance, I may say that I find few images of nature more beautiful than the silent, meditative impressions of a snowy field backstopped by a stark black wood. Pause again, slowl...
So Much Depends on Photography
“India is in a constant state of photographic decay-- I mean that in a good way,” Jimmy Chalk said to me, stepping over a shredded bicycle tire. He was approaching a wall that had once been painted with Tamil letters, but was now faded and cracking, the paint curling outwards like shards of bark. “You see what I mean?” he asked. “Every wall, every bit of sidewalk, is gradually decaying here, and this gives ...
Albert Hastings and Other Strangers
“If we are to love our neighbors, before doing anything else we must see our neighbors. With our imagination as well as our eyes, that is to say like artists, we must see just not their faces but the life behind and within their faces. Here it is love that is the frame that we see them in.” - Frederick Buechner I am an unabashed people-watcher. I don’t mean to be rude; I’m just fascinated by humanity. I fu...
Shoot the Terminal
I do just enough corporate travel each year to push me into that category of fliers who are a bit more familiar with airports than they would really like to be. But this familiarity has a nice silver lining to it, and as a photographer, that translates to a target-rich environment for capturing people in a sort of raw, unrehearsed setting of life. So, how should one go about catching this unique environment wi...
