The Origin
I don't honestly remember when I realized I wanted to be a photographer. I remember my first camera, a Pentax K1000 that my sister's first boyfriend gave me when I was 15. I loved that camera with a passion, loved the heaviness of it, the click of the shutter, loved the feeling of it in my hands. Over the next few years, I read as much as I could about photography, the history of photography, and the great photographers. Quickly my interest focused down into street photography and photojournalism of the '30s through the 60's. As a teenager, my career dream was to be a war photojournalist, the likes of Margaret Bourke-White who used to sew film canisters into the hems of her clothes to smuggle them out of East Berlin, and who stayed on a ship to photograph it as it sank after being hit by a German sub.
Clearly war photojournalism was a far cry from my actual subjects, primarily my friends. My friends were a group of "unschoolers" spread out across the country, including some in Canada. We were mostly socially isolated, from alternative families, and for the most part we saw each other only a few times a year. When I did get the opportunity to spend time with friends, I almost always had camera in hand, taking as many photos as I could of the precious time I had outside of my small world. After I learned to use a darkroom, I would spend the time between visits processing the photographs I had taken, lovingly going through the rituals of enlarger, developer, stop bath and fixer. I imagined photographing almost every person I met. In truth, my photography tended more towards my first love; street photography. I reveled most in capturing those candid moments, when one's subject seemed to forget that there was a camera, when their true self shone through.
As time went on, I lost touch with photography for a while. My love of photography never faded, but my ability to practice it did as I focused on making a living. My husband proposed to me in the photography section of the Portland Art Museum, a carefully orchestrated proposal in which we both waited uncomfortably for everyone else to leave so he could turn to me with ring in hand, while the black and white photographs surrounded us in the tight corridors of the exhibit on a rainy day in May.
Around 20 years since first discovering it, I am finally able to come back to my love of photography. I tend to take photos until the photography subject relaxes, and can be truly themselves. My love for photojournalism is still there, I believe it informs my style in that I try to capture those most uncontrived of moments, the truth behind the inherent discomfort of having one's photo taken. My passion is in the candid, the moment of truth captured in pixels.
