A quiet scene on a small road in Roccasparvera, a small seemingly deserted village high in the Italian Alps and where my great great grandmother was born in 1881 and lived before immigrating to San Francisco around 1906. There was a holiday that day, though you would not know it except for the colorful streamers flapping in the wind stretched from awning to awning around the town square. It seemed a moment frozen in motion and time. Ours were the only footsteps along the roads and the only voices echoing down the hills on which the precarious town is built. There was simplicity, history, and a quiet resilience in those walls.
On the campus of the University of Utah, in the Natural History Museum, just inside and to the left is an old 50’s photo booth: hours of fun.
"The city of Bath, England, where the rich and famous have vacationed to the mineral springs and ancient roman baths since the late 1760’s. The sulfur rich water has been attributed to better heath, fertility, and the curing of nearly every kind of human ailment. The Royal Crescent, designed by John Wood as a pinnacle of Georgian architecture, and in symbolic reference to the sun and moon, were the preferred vacation homes of British royalty and the well-to-do. It is a beautiful scene that seems dropped right out of the 17th century."
The face of the separation barrier just outside of Bethlehem, West Bank. Rows of barbed wire top the thirty foot concrete walls which are plastered with posters and propaganda, graffiti, signatures, protests, insults, injuries, and bullet holes. Spending a day in the small town of Bethlehem I witnessed the devastation caused by the wall, a side of a conflict that is little heard. Children cannot reach their schools, farmers are cut off from their lands, fathers and mothers are barred from jobs across the border and its many check points. For both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the wall is a powerful symbol albeit for very different reasons. In its controversy though, the wall itself offers itself as a captivating medium for expression, artistic, emotional, and political.
My niece. Never shy, but coy and cute as can be. We visited This Is The Place Park in Salt Lake last weekend; explored a pioneer era town, witnessed a bank robbery, bought 5 cent candies, and watched a five car train circle its small track around the pond. It was a perfect summer day—90 degrees, a cool breeze, family, and The Pie Pizza to boot. (The Pie Pizzeria, Fort Union 7186 S. Union Park--amazing)
"One of the least known and most dangerous sports of modern the Persian world, Buzkashi is played only in Tajikistan and Afghanistan around the festivities of New Ruz, or Persian New Year on March 21st. The sport is played much like Polo, though in place of a ball and mallet there is a sheep carcass and bare hands; not to mention an utter lack of propriety. A few dozen mounted horses participate in the game, their riders all men from the area competing for the spoils of victory; a prize awarded by the city itself, usually a car, cow, or pair of goats. Each man fends for himself; though sometimes alliances are formed by promises of a share in the winnings. The animal carcass must be obtained by a horseman amid the fray of slashing whips, stomping hooves, and an impossible tangle of legs, arms, and limbs and then carried in hand at a gallop to the goal located in a high corner of the packed dirt arena. Men have been known to lose their lives in such a struggle. However, it is not only the players and their mounts whose lives are in peril. An audience of strictly men circles the entire arena, concentrated around the goal; they sit on their haunches ready to spring to their feet and out of the path of the stampeding horses. This is one spectator sport where daydreaming is a dangerous gamble. Myself, one of the only women to attend such an event, was nearly trampled by a wayward set of horses taking a shortcut through the crowd toward the goal. The above demonstrates the moment when the mangled query is dropped by the leading horseman, causing a sudden halt of his pursuers who quickly reach down from their saddles to retrieve the carcass and run it in themselves for victory."
" Though this picture was taken in Khorog, Tajikistan, this is a familiar scene to most of the Muslim world in some shape or another. Sitting just outside the mosque in the open square was this weather worn set of about one hundred cubby holes used for housing the shoes and sandals of the entering worshipers since shoes must be left behind before entering the house of worship. Such a descriptive portrayal of faith and humility, this image speaks to me of a devotion more sincere and tangible than almost any I have seen. I try to imagine all the shapes and sizes of the shoes behind those small doors and the places that they have been; and then I think of those feet at one point or another carrying their owners on pilgrimage to Mecca, Medina, or Mashhad. "
Isle of Poros, Greece. We spent an afternoon strolling the choppy island hills through a maze of white washed walls and bright blue doors. Through a red rusted gate a scene caught my eye, a scene of simple yet distinct colors and form. Stopping, this is what I found, a serene moment wrapped in elegant while and tied with a burst of yellow and red. Not being a sucker for stills fruit and flower pots are not my usual muse, though it is refreshing to try something new. Really it was the colors that drew me in rather than the model itself.
"First place award winner in the 2008 American Councils for International Education Photography Contest."
A young girl on the side of the road intrigued me as we passed. She stood there with such a resolved and exhausted look on her small face, her body sagging; her hands hung limply at her sides. The pail at her feet told the story; that she had been retrieving water from a distance away for her family. Tajikistan's water supply is by any standard undrinkable, yet most Tajik people, whether by lack of proper means or education, still drink from wells, rusted pipes, rivers, and lakes. My husband and I spent the last year of our lives living in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, a small impoverished country in Central Asia. During our time there we traveled throughout the country; to its cities, villages, farms, to the cotton fields, the aluminum factory, monuments, archaeology sites, and museums. We participated in an intensive Farsi language program through the American Councils for International Education Organization. Learning the language opened wide doors for us to understand the culture, the people, and the politics of Tajikistan, Iran, and Afghanistan. While there I also interned with The Urban Institute, a local NGO working for the betterment of society through simple things like water purification, waste removal, and citizen participation in local government.
For anyone looking for something truly unique in photography, you must get to know Fan Ho. Shooting in China throughout the 1950’s, Fan Ho has an incredibly unique take on light, shadow, and line. His subjects, almost always candid, are caught in the mundane actions of life amid the lines and shadows of China’s seductive background. Visually his work is subtle yet stark, making no excuses for its bold strokes and contrasts, the kind of vision that requires the utmost patience. It simply makes a little fluttery knot of admiration in my chest that makes me want to run right outside with my camera. The above is a shot taken of the Seine river bank steps in Paris inspired by Ho’s use of line, asymmetry, and shadow with figures. 
As requested, the crew of the Indian coal ship in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates. Covered from head to toe in black coal dust they spoke to us in broken English dialogues taken from famous Hollywood blockbusters and posed like they were in the middle of a New York fashion shoot. 
In San Fransisco last week for the Ansel Adams and Robert Frank exhibit at the MOMASF. Inspiring. Frank’s “The Americans” a series of portraits had me glued to the hardwood for hours. A brilliant mind, able to accentuate the quirks and expressions that define a personality and a people. Note the eyes especially. I highly recommend the new exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco, which also includes Georgia O’Keeffe which will be there until September 7, 2009.
Rainy summer day by the Tower Bridge, London. On rainy days the urban rush slows to a lazy crawl along the river and the buffeting sounds of the city are quieted by the patter of rain. The kind of dreary secretive setting you expect to have inspired Dickens.
" It is eighteen months, twenty-nine days, twenty-three hours, twenty-two minutes, and forty-five seconds; two round trip tickets to the edge of the earth, eleven months abroad, twenty-two countries, thirty-six borders, twenty-nine thousand one-hundred and sixty miles and seven thousand five-hundred and thirty-four photographs since we were married in the temple in Oakland California, December 28th, 2007."
