The Calling

To be human is to connect, to share stories, to create meaning.

Through both photography and poetry, I seek to explore this impulse by noticing what is often overlooked—the odd, the old, the ordinary. To marvel in the small moment, respect the Japanese idea of “ichigo ichie”—once in a lifetime.

One of the hardest tasks of my Life Journey is grappling with finitude and loss. Endings are built into life. How to reconcile this? How to navigate the paradox? The only way I know is to connect emotionally with other living beings. To share stories—of joy, of despair, and everything in between. To create meaning out of my own engagement with life.

Since my Life Journey celebrates self-expression through both vision and verse, I am submitting a series of three images and three accompanying poems. It is my hope that these images and poems will be considered as complementary to each other for purposes of the exhibition. The theme of the series is Trees; each image and its paired poem share a title. Titles of the three pieces are as follows: "Blue Joy", "Impressions", and "The Calling".

On a technical note: my chosen photographic portal and tool for both shooting and editing images is the iPhone. Spontaneity and portability are essential to my practice.