This collection contains the earliest set of images I put together, bound by a vision of light—you might say, it is “my first song”, whose lyrics I would continue to nurture for a lifetime. These early images inaugurated an artistic-spiritual commitment to cast light on humanity’s plight and celebrate its promise.
We encounter in this first portfolio an autistic boy trapped in silence, a Hare Krishna devotee in a moment of bliss, a runaway teen peering into our eyes, an empathic teacher comforting a despondent child. Each subject would be explored in later years to become a book-project on its own—with titles like Inner Grace, The Face of Prayer, Tompkins People, Couples, and The Healing Moment.
Among other images in this collection is a couple embracing at New York City’s very first Gay Pride parade, a silhouette of a lonely elderly woman facing the unknown, a homeless man with outstretched hands (in the shape of a crucifix) near children at play—images that reach beyond a concern for society’s outcasts, the poor, and the mentally ill, to define a unique genre of photography that form a theology.
This theology points audiences to a generous universe, ready to redeem those willing to be awakened, educate those yearning to be informed, and comfort those thirsting to be consoled.