Do people understand your work?
Artists create because they can't help it. Their work is a labor of love, a gift for those who have courage to step off life's treadmill. Sometimes, getting off is sudden, as in times of crisis, loss, illness, beginnings and endings. Those occasions force us to slow down, and when we do, our senses awaken, our hearts open. My photographs are for those who allow themselves to be vulnerable.
Do you see your work as mainstream?
No. The essence of my vision is poetic and spiritual, values that are not mainstream.
I worked in isolation most of my life because the networking resources for the spiritually poetic image did not exist. There is, however, another branch of Humanistic Photography, based on the tradition W. Eugene Smith, who was a remarkable journalist, which is documentary in nature and is more widely accepted.
As I work, I continue to focus on the truth of the work. If the vision I am nurturing will inspire another photographer to build on it–if it becomes seed for its own tree, I would be gratified. If not, I am at peace with having dared to live an authentic life. Walt Whitman understood making peace with the authentic life. In his Song of Myself, he writes:
I exist as I am, that is enough,
If no other in the world be aware I sit content,
And if each and all be aware I sit content.
One world is aware and by far the largest to me, and that is myself,
And whether I come to my own to-day or in ten thousand or ten million years,
I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness I can wait.
My foothold is tenon'd and mortis'd in granite,
I laugh at what you call dissolution,
And I know the amplitude of time.
How do you deal with your ego?
Early on, I realized that I was only a channel, and not the true creator of the work. I believe that the better one can be as a conduit, the more authentic the work becomes. One simply has to be in tune with one's breath, and the source of that breath, to realize that. I believe it was Andre Gide who said "Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better."
The trends of photography will come and go, but the message and power of love will remain. That is what sustains me.
What equipment do you use?
I use a 35mm camera fitted with a 20-35 mm lens. This lens requires me to be close to my subject. I like that intimacy, and appreciate the subject being aware of my presence. I need to be able to signal and pick up cues during the session that are vital to the success of the shoot. The wide space effect gives the photograph "breathing room," a necessary ingredient which allows the viewer to "walk into" the picture.
I work with the least amount of equipment, and use natural light as much as possible, and when necessary, supplement it with on-camera bounce flash. I like to shoot with the widest aperture, so that there is the least amount of depth of field in the picture, making the subject the only item in focus.
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