You can follow me in real time and read about my nomadic adventures as they happen on my Instagram account.
I will post to my blog here when I have longer stories to relay!
Large Scale Prints: Mark Spencer Hotel
What a treat it was to be able to work with Dardinelle Troen with her vision of creating visuals for the Mark Spencer Hotel. She conceived the bold art pieces as illusionary extensions of the hotel environment.
Here are the three photographs I created, each giving me some of the most challenging technical considerations I have ever faced. And I loved every minute of making these! These snapshots don’t do justice as opposed to seeing them in person.
No Words
A wise gentleman friend I am just getting to know visited me last night to gather around my table to share in a comfort meal of meatloaf made from local beef and potatoes and lettuce from the local mercantile shop. He brought me gifts in many forms: hot cereal made in small batches by his friend who is a local seed scientist, a small bag of oat flour milled nearby, a DVD he said I must watch and a CD he said I must listen to, two newspaper articles (one was an op ed he wrote about rural collaboration) and a tattered brochure he carried while visiting and hitchhiking in Belize last week.
He counts 76 years that he has lived on this earth, 45 of them at his ranch near my cabin. Prior to arriving here as a young man, he taught film-making classes in Boston. We chatted about many things, with all threads trailing back toward observations of the world around us and creating art from it.
For some reason, when has asked to see some of my photos, he was shaken by this portrait which has been buried in my image folder from an assignment in Tanzania. He asked me to enlarge it on my screen over and over again. He demanded that I look at it, close the file, and look at it again.
I understand what he is saying to me, without the use of any nomenclature. With the last display, he excused himself and went into a side room and kept murmuring something I could not hear. And I didn’t need to.
12th Annual Julia Margaret Cameron Awards – First Place + Honorable Mention
Two of my images placed in the 12th Annual Julia Margaret Cameron Awards: The Salt Workers (First Place, Landscapes + Seascapes) and Maasai Warrior (Honorable Mention, Portrait).
The Salt Workers image will be exhibited in Barcelona April 11-27, 2019.
The Salt Workers image was created while on assignment with Dignity Period and Oregon Health & Sciences University and is part of an on-going series of images depicting the salt workers in the Afar region of Ethiopia.
Maasai Warrior was created while on assignment with Maternity Africa and is part of a series of images created with the Maasai tribe near Arusha, Tanzania. This particular warrior was addressing his tribe regarding the dangers of obstructed labor for pregnant women.
Lightbox Gallery: In Gratitude
Four of my images were selected to be exhibited in the upcoming “In Gratitude” exhibit at Lightbox Gallery, curated by Laura Valenti.
Opening reception is November 10, 2019 from 5-8pm.
What a delightful honor to be included in this exhibit!
Ugandan Mother
International Photography Awards: Portrait and Moving Images Awards
My image Boys From Afar was awarded an Honorable Mention at the International Photography Awards in the Pro Portrait Category.
In addition, I submitted for the first time a video in the Pro Moving Images Category and Where We Began also was awarded an Honorable Mention in this category.
Kaaterskill Fine Arts Gallery: Constellations
One of my images Jijiga, Ethiopia, created with my cell phone while on assignment with Mercy Corps in Jijiga, Ethiopia was part the “Constellations” exhibit at the Kaaterskill Fine Arts Gallery.
This show was curated by Robert Tomlinson and will run until September 9, 2018.
An exciting aspect of this show was that one of my long-time crushes, Steve Buscemi, attended the opening!
The Salt Workers
Continuing our celebration for astonishing yet under-appreciated workers of our world, we are excited to announce that the planning of a new book is in the conceptual stage under the working title “The Salt Workers of Afar“.
This book will include portraits of Ethiopian salt workers and editorial images of their process of extracting salt from the hottest place on earth in the Danakil Depression, located in the Afar region of Ethiopia. Many stories have been written about this area recently including this article from the New York Times.
This book will be the second in a series depicting workers around the world. The first book focusing on market workers from Bahir Dar, Ethiopia was published in 2014.
Content for the book was obtained during several visits to the Afar region beginning in 2013. Most recently in February of 2018, a small team traveled to the area to set up a portable studio as part of a Prints For Prints project, donating photographic prints to each worker they interviewed. In addition to giving a cherished photograph to the nomadic workers, sunglasses were distributed which were donated from nursing home members in Coos Bay.
Events are planned to celebrate this nomadic culture, a tribe of people who shun modern tools and mechanization in favor of being led on foot by the sun and moon and shape their salt blocks by hand using ancient salt picks.
Current events are:
April 13-14, 2018, Where We Began: Night-time image video and sound projection on buildings in Astoria, Oregon as part of the IlluminART festival
August + September, 2018, The Salt Workers of Afar, print exhibit at Pushdot Studio in Portland, Oregon, reception August 2, 7-9PM
Contact us if you have questions or ideas about the project. We would love to hear from you!
Images from the Afar region of Ethiopia
Dignity Period: A Question of Health + Happiness
This past February, I worked on another assignment with Dignity Period, a charitable organization based in Mekelle, Ethiopia. We traveled to remote areas of the Afar region where we met nomadic tribes and listened to stories from girls, women, boys and men about how they view menstruation and the struggles (lack of water, superstitions, scarce supplies) they encounter.
While we went there with educational materials and to check on supply levels of donated reusable menstrual pads, what we left with were many questions and an adjustment to our own assumptions.
I traveled with a wonderful writer, Sara Veltkamp, from Minerva Strategies, a communications organization based in Seattle, Washington. Here is a blog entry that Sara wrote soon after we arrived home.
More questions rise every day as I reflect on this trip, both professionally and personally. We live in such a glorious, complex world. And we get to start over every single day if we listen.
Images from the Afar region of Ethiopia
Travel Oregon: Farm Loop Maps in Eastern Oregon
Just saw the new farm loop maps that Travel Oregon and Eastern Oregon Visitor’s Association created with my images. I loved this assignment! Running around the back roads of eastern Oregon is one of my all-time favorite things to do.
And these maps will help you do it also!
Cove-Union Map