siskind

Here’s a treat: pictures from Aaron Siskind’s series entitled “Pleasures and Terrors of Levitation.” He made these around the time I was born.

I have always loved them. Well, I love all of his work. I also really liked him. I was lucky enough to do some business with him when I was a gallery owner. He reminded me of my dad.

Anyhow, I am still trying to get back on my feet after the surgery and just couldn’t resist the parallel.

a portrait

I think it was my son-in-law, Sam, who told me that anyone can write for Wikipedia. I don’t know if that’s true, but if so, some someone wrote this definition of the word “portrait”:

“A portrait is a painting, photograph, sculpture, or other artistic representation of a person, in which the face and its expression is predominant. The intent is to display the likeness, personality, and even the mood of the person. For this reason, in photography a portrait is generally not a snapshot, but a composed image of a person in a still position. A portrait often shows a person looking directly at the painter or photographer, in order to most successfully engage the subject with the viewer.”

I consider myself a portrait photographer.

But I often make portraits that are about anything but the person in the picture. In fact, that’s probably when my portraits are most successful.

I know, you’re thinking… Gloria, the Percocets…

But think about it. How much of ourselves do we project onto the work we make? I say: a lot!

Andrea Modica once told me she believed every picture she has ever made has been a self-portrait. (Look up her work if you aren’t familiar with it. She’s amazing.) I agree with her.

This image was made one afternoon when I was wandering around the classrooms at St. Mary Kevin’s. They were empty, as school was not in session. I love the rooms; they have dirt floors, old wooden benches and even older desks, windows that filter in the bright African sunlight and best of all, those blackboards. The blackboards aren’t like the ones we’re used to in America. They are actually painted onto the wall. No erasers needed. In time, words pile upon words and drawings upon drawings. Layers and layers of thoughts, ideas, images, expressions, dates and names eventually take on a life of their own. The blackboards transform into swaths of light, punctuation, joy, repetition, poetry, movement and endless streams of time. (Eventually, a new “chalkboard” is painted over the old one, probably once there is so much dense information on it that no new stuff can be deciphered.)

To me, they become starry nights.

Or patterns on fabric - black velvet or chenille.

Or a sentence to be diagramed.

Or pin-prick pictures.

Or a musical score.

This young woman was seated on one of the old benches in front of the blackboard in one of the classrooms. The room was dark, and she was just sitting there quietly, all alone. I had never seen her before, and quite frankly, I never saw her again after I made this picture. We didn’t even speak. So you see, I knew nothing about her.

Is the picture about me, then? The decisions I was making at that moment, the way I was responding to the room, the light, the blackboard, the chance and somewhat magical encounter with this young woman? The way I feel about myself as a woman, as a being on this planet?

readers inform

I have heard of several celebs doing good work in Africa, but was especially moved by something a reader sent me about Natalie Portman. I love what she has to say about her wish for the future of our planet. It’s something we travelers talked about on our mission trip in December: that in Uganda we were always seeing people helping people in their community, taking care of a one another... and how we wished we could say the same about day to day living in the US.

“’I understand that people might be jaded,’ said Portman. ‘I know I get turned off by most celebrity joining-in efforts. But I’m interested in this because it’s about diverting some of the unwarranted attention we have in our celebrity-crazed culture and passing it on to something else. We can give people a voice who would not normally have one.’

The Listen Campaign website includes a video of Portman visiting a young 17-year-old boy named Nicholas in Uganda – an HIV-positive AIDS orphan who is trying to raise his sister and three brothers.

‘The thing that upset me most is that we weren’t taught about this stuff at school,’ said Portman. ‘We weren’t taught that half the world lives on less than $3 a day.’

Although she has had a lot of success in films, the young actress has thought about trading the position in for work in a non-profit organization, and claims that her travels through some of the poorest countries in the world has really opened her eyes about life, ambition, and true happiness.

And if she has one wish for the future of the planet, it would be this:

‘People [should] pay attention, look to their neighbors. I think we’ve lost so much community. I think that’s one of the things I’ve appreciated most seeing in these villages is just the sense of community, where an entire family – an entire community – takes care of each other. And we’ve really lost that. And when you lose that on a personal level, you lose that on a global level as well. But I see a lot of people really wanting to do positive things in the world. And I feel that it’s like a new generation. You can watch the news and it feels like it’s the end of the world, very apocalyptic. So I just try and find people around me who are doing positive things.’”

Also word about the film “War/Dance” From another reader:

11/9/2007: WAR/DANCE Reviewed in LA Times
By Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

"'It is difficult for people to believe our story,' 14-year-old Dominic says at the beginning of 'War/Dance,' an enormously emotional and spirit-raising documentary. 'But if we don't tell you, you won't know.' And if you don't know, you will be missing something quite special.

To make a memorable documentary, a film like 'Hoop Dreams' or 'Spellbound' that can't be forgotten once seen, you have to be more than gifted, you need an instinct for an unusual story and, frankly, you must have luck on your side. 'War/Dance,' co-directed by Sean Fine and Andrea Nix Fine, has all that and more.

Winner of the documentary directing award at Sundance and audience awards at festivals around the country, 'War/Dance' is as irresistible as the rhythms of African music on its soundtrack. It's a fantasy set in real life, and, like all great fantasies, its moments of light are set against a backdrop of darkness and even horror.

The setting in this case is Uganda, more specifically northern Uganda, where a terrifying group called the Lord's Resistance Army has been in rebellion against the government for about 20 years, often resorting to the use of abducted child soldiers to stay in business. Members of the north's Acholi tribe have been forced to live in war zone displacement camps so vulnerable to the rebels they are under round the clock military protection.

Uganda also is a country where music and dance are so important that capital city Kampala hosts an annual National Music Competition, for which all of the country's 20,000 schools compete to enter. As the competition's director says, 'it's the Olympics as far as these kids are concerned.'

These two aspects of Uganda don't ordinarily meet. But in 2005 the primary school in the remote Patongo refugee camp, with students who are largely war orphans or rescued child soldiers, won its regional competition and, for the first time, headed to Kampala to compete in the nationals.

Co-director Sean Fine, who served as cinematographer, spent three months in Patongo, observing the participants as they prepared for the big event and getting close enough to the kids to have three of them trust him with their own dreadful stories.

Rose, a 13-year-old orphan, saw things no one, child or not, should witness. Nancy, age 14, kept her younger siblings together as a family after their father was murdered and their mother abducted. And Dominic, a devoted xylophone player also 14, did things during his time as a child soldier he's been unable to tell anyone.

Though 'War/Dance' at times overdramatizes already dramatic material, when these children relate their experiences directly to the camera, the effect is overpowering.

The remarkable thing about 'War/Dance' is the therapeutic, restorative effect singing and dancing has on these understandably somber young people. Like turning on a switch, performing enables them to recapture their true selves. 'Singing makes you forget,' one of them says, and another insists, 'in our daily lives there must be music. Life becomes so good.'

Though the national competition is in eight categories, 'War/Dance' concentrates on three of them: Western choral performance, instrumental and traditional dance, where the students embrace the Bwola, the dance of the Acholi. "This is handed down to us by our ancestors," they say. 'Even war cannot take it from us.'

As the Patongo students head off to the nationals, the film's natural climax, they are excited to see 'what peace looks like' and intent on proving themselves. 'We are going to show them,' says Dominic, 'that we are giants.' Win, lose or draw, 'War/Dance' shows us that they already are."

Thanks to my readers and friends, Gail and Ann, for the good info!

fishing

Over the course of these past many months as a blogger, I have written about my wonderful kiddos, but haven’t told you too much about the fifth member of our little family. It’s high time.

Eddie and I met over the summer when I was seventeen. He was twenty-two. We were on our first date, the movie “2001, A Space Odyssey” – my roommate in tow – by the end of September; we were pretty much smitten by October; we were in love by December.

He wore flannel shirts and a beard that touched his chest. His dad would offer every now and then (in his thick Romanian accent) to give him a dollar per hair if he’d shave, but Eddie wouldn’t hear of it. He was in the process of “finding himself” and was looking in the sink at the student union where he washed dishes, in his reflection in the windows of cars he washed at the Bee Clean Car Wash, in the monkey cages at the primate center where he did research and, finally in the tax preparation class he enrolled in at an H&R Block office down the street from the university.

When he retired three years ago, he was a vice president at Henry and Richard’s place.

Eddie and I have been on high roads and low roads and all the curvy ones in between. Thirty-five years after that first date - with Judy sitting in between us at the movie theatre - we couldn’t be better, thank you.


This guy has never drifted from my corner. He has always cheered me on, he has always given me a leg up, he has always made me laugh, he has always listened, he has always let me be quiet.

I have heard on more than a handful of occasions from my women friends, “Puhleeeeeeeze, can we clone him?”

This past week he has steered me back on course after my surgery. He has not left my side for a second. But here is the coolest part:

A good friend said that for now I am a fish swimming along with only one fin. Eddie and I both thought that was a sweet and endearing image to hold in our thoughts. I pretty much let it go once I heard it. But he mulled it over for a day or two and finally said to me, “But you know, you’re still the best fish in the sea.”

Need I say more about the good fortune I had to snare this guy??

mother and child

Like most of you artists, I am often asked to donate work to this or this auction or fundraiser (a subject definitely worth discussing at some point on this blog.) I am selective about it these days. One that I am most proud of recently is a piece that I have donated to Jewish Family Services. If a donor makes a gift at a certain level, he/she gets one of these. It is photograph I made with my Diana (plastic camera) the year before my mom died. Jewish Family Services produced a beautifully designed direct mail piece about their annual fundraising event featuring the photograph they are offering to contributors. On it was a reproduction of my image, "Mother and Child", and my description of it:

"It’s a simple statue bought on a trip to Israel many years ago. It has been on the hearth in my family’s den since I was young; I’ve always considered it part of the landscape.

When my mother became ill, I realized that this special place, my childhood home, was not always going to be there for me. I began documenting its details. The smallest of things were suddenly full of new meanings. Even the unassuming metal sculpture took on added significance.

For my parents, it symbolized the love of parent and child, a compelling force in our close-knit family. As a girl growing up, it was comforting to glance over at it and be reminded how lucky I was to have the embrace and support of my family. And now, as a wife, the mother of two and the child of an aging father, these lessons have come full circle.

This is a simple photograph made with a toy camera. What it connotes, however, is rich, complicated and ever so powerful."

tuesday night

For the past several days now, I have been moving from being asleep to being alert to being groggy and to being all things in between. Being on pain meds makes it difficult to keep track of what is real and what is not; it is also tricky trying to figure out what I have already heard or said or done.

I am a person who is easily hypnotized. My imagination is pretty vivid; I can run with a suggested thought or idea and quickly give it a life of its own. (According to people in the “fear of flying” business, my imagination is what gets the best of me when I am on a bumpy flight.)

I have a colorful, plentiful array of dreams each night.

Throw all this together, and voila! You get a pajama-clad patient experiencing past and present fade-ins and fade-outs by the bucketful. The movies that have been rolling in my head since I woke up in the recovery room have really been entertaining. There is no sense of editing; the pictures overlap and move backward and forward without any warning.

I am a five year old - who just had her tonsils removed - enjoying a visit in the hospital from her curly headed boyfriend, Harry B. He brings me a gold birdcage in which is perched a plastic green warbler. Each time I open the cage door, the bird lets out a sweet, high-pitched whistle, and Harry B. shoots me a lopsided smile that is missing a couple of front teeth. A few thoughts (hours, days, doses?) later, I am treating my grandmother, cousin and sister to cheeseburgers, fries and vanilla milkshakes at my hometown drug store/soda joint with the ten-dollar bill I recently found on the sidewalk. Waking up on another occasion, I am riding my bike home from elementary school, then from a Sociology class to my tiny college dorm room.

You get the idea.

Time seems to be warped right now. Everything runs together.

Some of these scenes are “real” and some are made up. The night after surgery I was standing alone on a street corner in a small town very late at night. I was wearing a hatbox on my head. I’m fairly certain this image falls into the made up category, but then, it’s kind of fun not giving a lot of thought to which scene goes where on the continuum of my life experiences.

OK, I know, you would like for me to be less abstract and fill you in on how things went during surgery and how I’m doing now.

The surgery went a bit longer than expected – four hours. The great news is that the sentinel node biopsy revealed that there is no invasive cancer present. Only four nodes had to removed; they were the ones that took up the dye. As soon as the breast surgeon did her job, she passed the scalpel to the plastic surgeon who began reconstruction by putting a tissue expander in place. In about a month, I will begin receiving saline injections. Then the expander will be replaced with an implant. From what I understand, this whole process takes about three months and is no walk in the park.

So, it really is good news all in all. No chemo, no radiation. Thank you, each and every one of you who kept me in your thoughts and prayers and who have helped me get this far. You have no idea what a huge source of comfort and encouragement you have been.

As far as how I am doing now? The pain meds are masking the reality of it, that’s for sure. I am scheduled to give a talk about my work this Sunday. I am hoping to be able to pull it off. It’s giving me something to reach for, plan for, and that is a good thing.

Excuse me… time to drift off again!

floaters or sinkers?

You don’t have to be Jewish to know that chicken soup can make you feel better right away, especially during cold and flu season.

However, it definitely does become something Jewish when the discussion turns to the MAKING of the soup (and at this competitive level, we’re really talking about matzo ball/chicken noodle soup.) The creation of the matzo balls themselves is a true art form. They can run the gamut from small to medium to large. There are those that rise gently to the surface of the broth and those that assemble at the bottom of the bowl. Some are chewy; others light and fluffy like clouds.


Let the games begin! A soup competition has kicked into high gear these days in Kansas City. And my family and I appear to be the lucky beneficiaries!

Those who are proud of their recipes and the execution of them are not shy about confessing that theirs is the best. It just so happens that we are friends with several of these soup mavens, and, lucky for us, the shelves in our refrigerator started to fill up with this liquid gold as soon as I came out of surgery. In the photo above, Sondra proudly displays her soup before slipping the containers into our fridge.

Not only is a traditional chicken soup good, it is also really good FOR you! It is not called Jewish penicillin for nothing. Thank you, my friends, for shooting me up!

luck

I stole an issue of Time magazine from my doctor’s office last week. (We get Newsweek these days.) I learned some shocking and sobering stuff, mostly about breast cancer and its status in developing nations.

First of all, did you know that an estimated one million new cases of breast cancer will be diagnosed in the world this year? About 500,000 new and existing patients will die from the disease. Feel like you know way too many women who’ve been diagnosed with breast cancer lately? The fact is that one woman in eight in the US comes home from a meeting with her doctor with this grim news.

According to the article in Time, breast cancer used to be a “malady that mostly affected white, affluent women in the industrial hubs of North America and Western Europe.” Now, it’s everywhere. By 2020, this article goes on to say, “70% of all breast cancer cases worldwide will be in developing nations.”

But, as you have probably already guessed, detections and care are not proportionate worldwide. “Half of all Indian women with the disease go entirely without treatment. In South Africa, only 5% of cancers are caught in the earliest phase of the disease. In the US, that figure is 50%.” In places like desperately poor Kenya, if you don't have the means to travel overseas for treatment, a woman just basically "sits and waits for her death."

And, of course, cultural understandings of the disease differ wildly. “Americans may live in a world of pink ribbons and ‘Livestrong’ bracelets, but in other parts of the globe, breast cancer is still a shameful secret. Every three minutes an Egyptian woman is informed that she has the illness, and one of her first fears is that her husband will leave her. In India, women with breast cancer may be forced to use different plates and spoons because of the widespread belief that the disease is contagious.”

And so, of course, I think of my African women friends as I go through this experience… as I go for my mammogram and needle biopsy and lumpectomy and, tomorrow, mastectomy. As I share openly with everyone, as I am not shunned, as I get the surgery and treatment I need.

I know it is unequal; I know I happen to be on the lucky end.

geometry again

I continue to print the work from Africa.

geometry

"To take a photograph is to align the head, the eye and the heart. It's a way of life.” Henri Cartier-Bresson

Even though Cartier-Bresson dismissed photography as anything of much importance in his life and in his later years actually abandoned it in favor of painting and drawing, he has had a major influence in the history of the medium.

He has also had a major influence on me.

At an opening of mine a couple of years ago, a lawyer friend who has no training in or real passion for art said to me, “You must have been really good in geometry!”

I was taken aback by Rosie’s comment. I had struggled through all my math classes back in middle and high school and never did all that well in any of them… with the exception of geometry. I loved it and actually did OK in it.

I didn’t realize it showed up in my work as a photographer until Rosie called it to my attention that night at the gallery.

I am certainly unaware of the fact that I am thinking (?) in a geometric way when making certain pictures; I am always pleasantly surprised when it becomes an obvious and consistent thread in the work.

"For me the camera is a sketch book, an instrument of intuition and spontaneity, the master of the instant which, in visual terms, questions and decides simultaneously. In order to ‘give a meaning’ to the world, one has to feel involved in what one frames through the viewfinder. This attitude requires concentration, discipline of mind, sensitivity, and a sense of geometry. It is by economy of means that one arrives at simplicity of expression." -Henri Cartier-Bresson

sunday morning

I have a neighbor who I usually only see when I’m walking the dog and he’s driving by in his car. Every now and then he stops, then rolls down his window and tells me about his daughter. It’s usually about a landmark event in her life.

Yesterday, he rolled down his window and said, “M. is turning 15 today.”

I congratulated him, bagged Sam’s poop and walked on home. I thought about the last time my neighbor rolled down his window and tossed out a proud tidbit about his lovely daughter.

“M. started high school today.”

That seems like just a few days ago, but I guess it's been about five months now.

Before that, it was, “M. graduated from middle school today, can you believe it?”

As I was walking back home yesterday, I realized that I can always count on this particular neighbor to mark time for me. Sure, I have a calendar and even a planner. But when each day just sort of rolls gently and evenly into the next, it’s easy to feel as if time doesn’t really pass.

My neighbor calls to my attention the thunderous and quick movement that time truly is.

save the date

The Change the Truth Friendraiser/Fundraiser is over four months away, but I am now in the process of printing the “save the date” cards and will mail them next week. Can’t help it – I’m a Virgo… we Virgos are blessed (cursed?) with the need to be at the head of the class when it comes to organizational skills. (You should see my sock drawer.)

The event is scheduled to take place at the very cool Screenland Theatre in Kansas City on June 12th. We will have African food, dancing and drumming, as well as the showing of Lynne’s film about the orphanage and our trip there.


There will be shopping, too! We will be auctioning paintings and drawings made by the children during art class with Lonnie and Jane this past December. Some of the artwork will take the form of greeting cards, and they will be available for purchase, as well. African crafts will be strategically placed by our checkout stand for those of you who are known to give in to impulse shopping.

I may have one really big surprise about the evening to announce in the near future, so stay tuned!


Please be sure to send me your snail mail address if you are not currently on our mailing list. That way I can send you a spiffy save the date card, and later, an invitation to the real thing. Consider sending me the addresses of your friends, your aunts and uncles, your boss, your distant cousin and your next-door neighbor if you think they may have an interest in joining in on the fun.

Also, if you would like to help us plan and/or work at the event, let me know that. I guarantee we’ll have a good time!

here i am

I am so excited about some of the Africa work I’ve been printing! I was going to schlepp down to hear Barack Obama speak today, but decided to keep on working in the warm cocoon that is my digital darkroom. I will post some of the photographs soon. For now, I want to bring you up to date on my medical condition. Or as I have become rather obnoxiously fond of saying: keep you abreast of the situation. (I know, I know.)

It’s weird, yes, to be discussing this in such a public forum. It may make some of you uncomfortable, and by all means, turn off the set or change channels, if so! I decided to be not so private about this: you have come this far and so have I, so why quit now?

I remember back in my mother’s day, there were “radical mastectomies.” It was horrible to even think about when I was a young girl. If someone did have one, I found out about it by accident (overhearing a hushed conversation.) Then, if I saw that woman at a restaurant or at Temple or at a shopping center, I would nervously and ashamedly glance at her chest to see if I “could tell.” In my young eyes, it seemed that her life had certainly come to an abrupt end. Plus, it really seemed creepy (early incarnation of the “ick factor.”)

All these years later, well, here I am.

The emails I have received of late give me the courage and the confidence to go to this place in my blog. Here is an example, a missive from a gal pal in California:

“I have wanted to write you since learning about your diagnosis, but the cat has got my tongue... and has yet to let go. The image of my mom enduring chemo followed by two back to back surgeries is still fresh in my mind. I too have been poked, prodded, MRI'd, mammogrammed, ultrasounded, biopsied, lumpectomied, and listed as a high-risk patient. I'm developing an aversion to oncologists and the sharp tools with which they've honed their skills.

I love you to pieces and it rips me up that you have to go through this. The thing is, I have no doubt that you are going to conquer this pronto. God has appointed you with lots which only you can tend to — You've only just begun, and in no time, you're going to be galloping forward again.

Sharing the experience with my mom challenged me to grow in ways I never thought possible — I am so thankful for this. I'm thankful you're experiencing the same. I see you taking the bull by the horn and challenging this head on, which is encouraging as I read along. In a very short time, you've taught me that all of this stuff can be ‘routine’ with the right attitude. So, gosh, thank YOU! Thank you for sharing so openly how this experience is strengthening you. Go team!”

So, onward I go. Here is the skinny on my situation (again, leave your computer and go to another room, start the laundry, cover your eyes, slip in your pilates DVD if you don’t want to know this stuff, please!)

The DCIS is apparently very widespread in the one breast. (They call the other breast “unremarkable” which is fine with me. Even though that kind of hurt my feelings at first, I now wish they both were unremarkable.) Since we only have to worry about one, not both, because of the genetic marker deal, we are now only talking about surgery on one side.

Since my surgeon does not see any hope of coming up with clear margins on a second lumpectomy (and anyway, quite frankly, I am not beating down any doors to get into the radiation clinic) she has recommended a mastectomy with reconstruction, as well as a sentinel node biopsy. The latter is to make sure there is no invasive cancer in the lymph nodes.

I have scheduled the surgery and made arrangements for our dog, Sam, to go to the “Happiness Hotel” for a couple of days. I will be in the hospital for one or two nights and should be feeling pretty well a few days after that. Eddie, I'm sure, will not leave my side, unless they make him, and even then, he'll put up a good fight for sure.

Thanks for all your encouraging, supportive, funny and heart-warming emails, cards and letters.

Here’s an example of one of my favorite funny ones.

“Gloria: Since I first heard that they were doing breast reconstruction from tummy fat, I've aspired to be a breast donor. And If I could I'd gladly relinquish all my belly for some double D's for you! Wouldn't that be a perfect world? Since I can't, I'll find some special incantations for you and Eddie and the kids. This, too, will be over soon.”


... OK, you can look now.

nicolas and josh

During this time of decisions about surgery, playing way too much online Scrabble to take my mind off the aforementioned (when I am trying to fall asleep, strange words - which I am just learning about and which don't look or seem real but are - keep parading in front of my tired eyelids; faqir, sug, jo, zoa, qanat, aa and umiaqs, just to name a few) things like the following letter written about a pen pal at St. Mary Kevin's seem so grounding and so wonderful. This was written by Josh, whose friend in Uganda also happens to be the little boy I have grown especially fond of over the past two years.

"Nicolas is a boy from Uganda. In Uganda they have a lot of fighting and war, especially in Lira. His mom and dad were murdered. His mother was a teacher and his father was a shopkeeper. Now Nicolas lives at the St. Mary Kevin Orphanage with his sister Elisabeth. Nicolas loves his grandmother and when it’s school break he goes back to the village near Lira and stays with her, even though it is still dangerous there.

I know Nicolas from writing letters and sending pictures, which we both like to draw. Nicholas always draws me a picture in his letters. His favorite colors are black, yellow and red. The last letter he sent was of him in his school uniform. They wear green shorts and white collared shirts; green is my favorite color. In another letter Nicolas drew a map of the entire school and orphanage ~ even the dormitories where he sleeps and the grass where he likes to play 'football.' His favorite team is Manchester United and he drew a symbol of ManU in one letter. I don't think Nicolas has his own bicycle, but he likes to ride and loves swimming, too.

We want to meet each other and be more than 'best-friend pen pals' some day."

sparring

This is kind of how I’m feeling today.

I made this picture a little more than ten years ago when I was in Santa Fe. I was taking a workshop from Peter DeLory, who decided a self-portrait would be a great way for us to rev our engines for the week. Having never done a photograph of myself before, I took the assignment quite seriously. I hopped into my car and drove out of town, up the road toward the ski area. I set up my Hasselblad on a tripod, pulled the trigger for the self timer and ran like mad to get across the road and up onto this rock in time for the exposure to be made. (I think I may have had 30 seconds or so.) The contact sheet is pretty funny. There are more frames of me climbing (not so gracefully) onto the rock than of me actually on top of the thing. But for this one exposure, I did make it to the exact location I was hoping for and even had time (a very last minute and unplanned decision) to raise my arms up as if I had just made quick work of an opponent in the boxing ring.

Years later, Max used PhotoShop to put some humongous boxing gloves onto my hands, making it look as if I was Ms. Hulk Hogan and gave the retouched photo to me as a gift. We had all fought madly over those huge boxing gloves at a white elephant gift exchange that year at our annual Chanukah party. None of my family members ended up with the coveted gloves, but at least I have the photo Max made. It is tacked up on the wall of my office just to remind me that I can be strong.

With all the words of encouragement I have been receiving from so many, along with some other important bullet points (as they say in the few board meetings I have been known to attend) I am feeling like I may have won round two in my bout with cancer.

Bullet points:

~ I failed a test! And that is a good thing. It was the blood test to see if I have the genetic marker for breast cancer.

~ I received in the mail a beautiful, handmade magic wand from my friend Laura in Texas. With it came a certificate that grants me all sorts of powers, each one clearly itemized and defined.

~ I saw the movie The Diving Bell and The Butterfly. You may or may not know the story of the Frenchman who wrote the book upon which this Julian Schnabel movie is based. It’s a film of amazing power about the triumph of the human will, adapted from the memoir by Jean-Dominique Bauby, the editor of the magazine Elle. At age 43, Bauby had a stroke, leaving him paralyzed, with only the ability to move one eyelid. In a Normandy hospital, he learned to communicate by blinking this one eye, and by this means managed to write his book, published days before his death in 1996. All Bauby had was: one blinking eye (with which he could see, but not well) his memory and his imagination. By learning to explore what he could recall and what he could conjure up, he discovered a kind of freedom and humanity he’d never known before and which helped him to actually cope with each new day.

The movie helped me put my health issues into stunning and immediate perspective.

Round three begins this coming week, as I meet with the surgeon to determine our next course of action, which thanks to my “good genes” may not be as bad as I had thought it would be.

beauty shop

It’s not always what you see at first glance that is the most interesting.

I was walking down the dirt road in Gulu in northern Uganda, my eyes moving from one broad smile to one tired mother to one ramshackle hut to one row of scrawny sweet potatoes laid out for sale. The sounds of laughter and music and calls of “hey, muzuungu!” were better than any concerto or folk song or even my favorite Bonnie Raitt tune. Believe me when I tell you, my senses were in full tilt, soaking up every bit of my early morning stroll. My camera was slung across my shoulder, my hair was messed up from a restless sleep under a mosquito net that barely covered the tiny bed, my shoes were encrusted with bits of red earth.

I could not have been happier.

One of the most important lessons I have learned as a photographer is, of course, to pay attention. This requires a willingness to stay with something for a while; that could mean framing it and shooting it until you finally get to the core of the matter and see the picture you thought from the start might eventually appear. Or it may simply mean looking past the obvious to see what lies just underneath the surface.

I love it when I get the opportunity to do just that – and when it works. It makes me feel so alive.

guaranteed to make you smile

Please check out teacher Abbie’s blog.
Your hard day it will soften.
My daughter’s not a cyber hog;
You'll wish she’d post more often.

photo salon

It is very easy to feel like you’re working in a vacuum as an artist. You make new pieces, leave them around the house for family and visiting friends to see, maybe lug them down to your gallery, always (in my case, anyway) post them on the blog. But it can often feel as if no one is responding, and you have no idea what feedback there might be and how that might have an effect on where you’re going with the work.

Now that the digital age is upon us, it’s also really easy to get hung up on computer and Photoshop issues.

That’s why I love the photography salon I am in. We are a group of eight or so. Most of us have known one another since the early 80’s when I started my gallery. We are a grab bag of professions – a surgeon, a lawyer, a baker, an architectural photographer, a photo curator/historian/author, a fine art/portrait photographer, etc. But we all have a passion for photography – whether it is making it, studying it or collecting it.

We gather every couple of months to look at each other’s new work, talk about new photo equipment, books, shows, and trends, eat and drink. We encourage and challenge each other, and we enjoy one another’s company. Often we invite other photographers from the area to share their work and their ideas.


Yesterday we met to look at work, but also to celebrate the 70th birthday of one of our preeminent members, Richard Loftis. Richard and I first met shortly after I opened the Baker Gallery in 1981. He made his way through the front door with a handsome portfolio of Adams/Weston-esque silver prints (landscapes and figure work) that were drop dead gorgeous. I took him on as my first “local” photographer, and we have been very good friends ever since. He has shown his work extensively throughout the region, has been a technical advisor to many struggling printers and has constructed many an incredible darkroom (including mine). His expertise in the ways of traditional silver printing is humbling. Not one to miss a beat, he has even become a trusted and knowledgeable advisor to those of us fumbling our way into the world of digital capture and image making.

We are lucky to have one another in our little group. I hope you have a support group, as well, no matter what you do for your passion or for your living.

Happy birthday, Richard!

words of wisdom

Many readers have sent along comments regarding my breast cancer issues. I’d like to share some of them:

- The one piece of unsolicited advice I will give is: be very careful where you go looking for information on the Internet. It is a scary process and the information is often inaccurate.

- Reading your comments about breast cancer hit close to home, as I am one of the many who have been told to watch and monitor the calcium dots that appear in my mammos each year. You are giving others an opportunity to pass on info they have gathered. Maybe some of these medical battles wouldn't be quite so frightening if we shared our experiences more readily.

- Surely you have learned from the many survivors you have photographed that breast cancer is not a death sentence for some of us - it’s merely a bump in the road.

- You have too much work ahead of you to let a few little cells get you down. Do what you gotta do, take care of yourself, and know that there are many, many of us standing beside you.

- I think the most important thing is to trust your doctor, and to get a second opinion (if only to confirm the first opinion).

- Be strong, girl! (It's not the disease, it's the medical establishment you'll need strength for!)

- Cancer sucks! The love and friendsips – concern from others – priceless.

- Eleven years ago this month I had a mastectomy - my left breast, and was very fortunate that no lymph nodes (23 removed) were found to have cancer cells. I was also fortunate in having a calm, optimistic attitude throughout the surgery and recovery, and the surgeon was not only amazed but said very positively that this was a very good factor in the success of my treatment.

- Let me know how it goes with the docs, as well as inside your heart and head. All get a voice in this journey, in addition to your body!

- Remarkably, when I look back at my fight against breast cancer, I don’t view it as a negative. As a result, I feel like I’ve become stronger with clearer priorities.

- If you ever had any qualms about privacy of your body, well throw them right out the window. I never guessed how many persons I would be exposing my breasts to when this started. Now don’t get me wrong, I am not a prude but any means, but to have several people walk into a room and ask you to disrobe for this test or that test… well, let’s say you get used to it. I tried to find a bright spot I could hang onto. That’s usually when my perverse sense of humor took over. Right after the “wires” go into place and you think “surely they can’t think up another test” your nurse comes to get you and says, “We need to do a mammogram.” How can you possibly have the breasts squeezed into that machine with those wires in there? All I could think of as I walked down the hall was, “I wonder if I could get a radio signal with all of this wire!” So off I go trundling down the hall with the wires hanging out. What a lovely sight that must have been. I guess what I am trying to say is we all have had pain involved in the “process": but most are still here to talk about it. That is the real bottom line and the best hope for any women with the diagnosis.

- There are some situations--divorce, disease among them--where even though the numbers are high, there is no comfort in numbers. Everyone has a story they can share, but still, it is all individual and very deeply personal.

- I've been mulling what to say to you and the deal is, I have no idea what to say. It's a rotten deal, but you will get through it.

(And, finally, the following excerpt from Blue Like Jazz, by a writer named Donald Miller, sent to me by a reader. I was thrilled to receive this. I heard Susan Sontag’s son on NPR’s “Fresh Air” the other day say that his mother absolutely hated the cancer/war metaphors. I had never really thought about it before, but obviously others have.)

- “It is always the simple things that change our lives. And these things never happen when you are looking for them to happen.

My realization came while attending an alumni social for Westmont College. I had never attended Westmont, but my friend Michelle did, and she invited me. Greg Spencer, a communications professor, was to speak, and Michelle thought I might enjoy the lecture. I did. More than I can say. The lecture was about the power of metaphor. Spencer opened by asking us what metaphors we think of when we consider the topic of cancer. We gave him our answers, all pretty much the same, we battle cancer, we fight cancer, we are rebuilding our white blood cells, things like that. Spencer pointed out that the overwhelming majority of metaphors we listed were war metaphors. They dealt with battle. He then proceeded to talk about cancer patients and how, because of war metaphor, many people who suffer with cancer feel more burdened than, in fact, they should. Most of them are frightened beyond their need to be frightened, and this affects their health. Some, feeling that they have been thrust into a deadly war, simply give up. If there were another metaphor, a metaphor more accurate, perhaps cancer would not prove so deadly.

Science has shown that the way people think about cancer affects their ability to deal with the disease, thus affecting their overall health. Professor Spencer said that if he were to sit down with his family and tell them he had cancer they would be shocked, concerned, perhaps even in tears, and yet cancer is nothing near the most deadly of diseases. Because of war metaphor, the professor said, we are more likely to fear cancer when, actually, most people survive the disease.

Mr. Spencer then asked us about another area in which he felt metaphors cause trouble. He asked us to consider relationships. What metaphors do we use when we think of relationships? We value people, I shouted out. Yes, he said, and wrote it on his little white board. We invest in people, another person added. And soon enough we had listed an entire white board of economic metaphor. Relationships could be bankrupt, we said. People are priceless, we said. All economic metaphors. I was taken aback.”

missouri arts council grant

Good news! Yesterday’s mail brought word that Change the Truth has been awarded a Missouri Arts Council grant. MAC, a state agency and division of the Department of Economic Development, provides grants to non-profit organizations to encourage and stimulate the growth, development and appreciation of the arts in Missouri. Recommendations are based on criteria that include artistic excellence, education and outreach, community support and diversity of audience served.


We applied for and will receive money to help underwrite the production cost for the film Lynne will be making of our recent mission to Uganda. The film will debut at our June 12 friendraiser/fundraiser event at the Kansas City Public Library.

We are thrilled to have the support of this very important public arts partner!

children helping children

I am constantly amazed and humbled by the good work being done by kids. They really want to help, and they just do it rather than merely talk about it.

Just before Christmas, a ninth grader named Ali called to say that she wanted to make a donation to Change the Truth in honor of her mom and give a certificate stating such as her gift.

More recently, I received a letter with cash stuffed in the envelope. The accompanying letter from a young girl named Ashton said:

“For Christmas I was given $25 to donate to any organization. I chose to donate mine to Change the Truth. I was hoping this could be used to help pay the school fees for my pen pal, Clare.”

Last night, the following email from a twelve year old in Chicago danced its way across my laptop:

“My Bat Mitzvah is in April 2009 and for my mitzvah project I would like to try to raise money for Change the Truth Foundation because I have been trying to find an organization that I could do for my mitzvah that would also help make people's life better in any way and now I found one. I will be thinking of ways to raise money. In addition for this foundation being my mitzvah project I would like to be a pen pal to one of these children to see what life is like and hopefully sometime before my Bat Mitzvah I would have the privilige to go to Uganda.
Thanks much,
Sara”

Ladies and gentlemen, I am here to say that there is hope for the future!

open shutter gallery

About a year ago the director of a photography gallery in Durango, Colorado contacted me to see if she could do a show if my work. No brainer. “Yes! And I’ll drive them out myself and stay for the opening. I love Durango!”

Well, I don’t think I can attend the opening, but thirty-four silver gelatin prints from my body of work entitled “Convergence” will be able to, thanks to a huge crate and the nice people at DHL.

The work spans about thirty years.

This is the earliest piece, made when I was a college student. It is part of s series I did on Appalachian bluegrass musicians.


This is the most recent image in the exhibition. It was made while Eddie and I were on vacation in Key West, Florida.


Most of the images are included in my book, Convergence, which is still available from Amazon, Photoeye and my basement.

It’s been great fun to go back through these photographs and assemble them for the show. All of them were made with my good old friends - my Hassleblad camera and FILM! I rarely work with film and silver paper anymore, as I have been crossing over to digital, but let me tell you, these prints are so gorgeous! My printer, Jesse DeMartino, did an incredible job of honoring my original intention with each and every dip into the developer, stop bath and fixer. (I still have my darkroom set up, and it is a wonderful one, but sadly I haven’t used it for some time now.)

Anyhow, if you are in or near Durango, go have a look. The show opens February 1 and runs through March 12.

change the truth team I reunion

If any of you are even remotely considering a “volunteer vacation” (or what my 19-year old refers to as an “alternative vacation”) let me tell you that it could be one of the best gifts you’ll ever give yourself.

Last night I had the immense pleasure of reuniting with the wonderful team that accompanied me on Change the Truth’s first mission trip to Uganda.


These people have become my very good friends. Trust me, when you spend so much time together in such an emotionally charged situation, it’s simply what happens – you get pretty close. After all, we saw each other first thing in the morning, we saw each other exhausted, we saw each other un-showered and without makeup, we saw each other in tears, we saw each other outside of our comfort zones, we saw each other make fools of ourselves dancing or trying to speak another language or trying to get a handle on our often gut wrenching sadness. And we had many hours to talk and get to know things about each other that usually take a long time to discover. For example, one night at dinner, someone posed this question: “What is your greatest fear?” You get the picture.

We got together last night to share pictures, talk about what it’s been like coming back home and watch a video that Lynne lovingly assembled in our honor.

Once you’ve been on a trip like this, you realize that the people with whom you shared the experience fall into a new category of friendship. You share something that no one else can truly understand, so that makes the relationship unique. And in that context grows an opportunity to explore a side of yourself that can, under ordinary circumstances, be hard to access.

There are plenty of books and websites that can be helpful in a search for just the right volunteer vacation for you/ your family. I highly recommend looking into it. And if you are interested in joining CTT on the 2008 trip, let me know.

Based on all the hugs, laughter and tears I saw us sharing last night (not to mention the profound work that was performed while we were at the orphanage!) I guarantee you that the trip was one of the best gifts we have ever given to ourselves.

so, what exactly is dcis?

Many of you have written me to say, “I’ve never heard of this before. What is it?

I had never heard of DCIS before, either. Believe me, when I got the call, the search engines on my computer were consulted and were then humming for several days. When the doctor phoned to lay the news on me, she spouted Latin: “You have ductal carcinoma in situ.” I reached all the way back to my eighth grade Latin class with Mr. Gilchrist for a response. I could have conjugated the verb “amo” (to love), but that didn’t seem appropriate. And, um, I remembered one statement, oddly, but “agricola sum” (I am a farmer) didn’t seem relevant, and besides, I am not a farmer, so that would have been a lie. I simply jotted down the diagnosis and fired up my laptop for more information.

Micro-calcifications had shown up on my mammogram for the third straight time. Just before I left for Africa, I had gone for a needle biopsy because of the re-appearance of these little buggers, and the diagnosis of DCIS was the stunning result.

What I have learned so far is that all women get micro-calcifications in their breasts. By the time a woman is in her eighties, she’s probably got plenty of them. They cannot be detected by feel because they are too tiny. They can, however, be seen on a mammogram. Since women are going for mammos earlier and more regularly these days, micro-calcifications show up more and more and call attention to the fact that an invasive cancer could be on the horizon. They aren’t really a problem unless they are clustered together. Mine, apparently, like hanging out together in large groups, sort of like teenagers at the mall.

When will they become an invasive cancer and for whom? That’s something that can’t be predicted yet.

So, the doctors tell me that some action should be taken, even though, at this point, the cancer is confined to the ducts and is not life threatening.

The first line of a defense is the needle biopsy. Then, if it is diagnosed as DCIS and not just a grouping of some random atypical cells, you get to graduate to an incisional biopsy, or lumpectomy, with which I had the pleasure of getting acquainted three weeks ago.

If the surgeon is able to get “clear margins” from this biopsy, the treatment then calls for radiation. After that, you’re done, except that you have to go in for mammos every six months, and you are put on the list of “high risk” patients. In my case, clear margins were not part of the picture. That, along with the fact that there is breast cancer in my family history and the fact that I am of Jewish Ashkenazi descent means that I am at even “higher risk” (different category).

So, now I am in the process of figuring out what’s next. I am immersed in a sea of doctor’s appointments, conversations with women who have been through this before, reading and thinking.

Strangely, I want to make pictures during the whole process. (It’s always been my way of trying to fully understand what’s going on around me.)

I have received some really great cards and letters from breast cancer survivors; they are full of encouragement and hope. Ironically, I have photographed survivors for the past four years at a Kansas City hospital's breast center. These women have rallied around me with full support. They have written things like this, my favorite, which came from Ida, a woman well into her seventies: “Do you remember taking the photo of me and my dear friends – four old lushes swizzling wine, that is? I strongly encourage you to celebrate your recovery with good friends enjoying a good wine!”

I still can’t really get my mouth around the words “I have breast cancer.” But I absolutely intend to do what Ida recommended: once on the other side of all this, celebrate with good friends “swizzling” a good wine.

wall drawings II

wall drawings

The photographer Helen Levitt has long been a huge inspiration to me.

During the 1940’s, Levitt made an amazing and wondrous body of work about children at play on the streets of New York. Some of those pictures have to do with chalk and crayon drawings children made on buildings, walls and sidewalks - graffiti, if you will.

Robert Coles, in the introduction to Levitt’s monograph In the Street, wrote of these drawings:

(He begins by quoting Anna Freud.)

“‘Do not fail to see how far ahead children can see, but only some of them, and they only sometimes, and for certain reasons which it is your task to comprehend… A child who seems confined by the world can’t escape, usually – but CAN look around all possible corners; or the child can try to change the world by seeing it differently. Our eyes lend themselves to our wishes and our conflicts. We only truly notice a small amount of what is there, to be noticed – and so children, like the rest of us, pay attention to what, for one reason or another, serves their purposes.’

She would have been the last one to claim originality and sweeping significance for such remarks, and yet any discussion of children’s art – what they draw or paint on paper, on canvases, or on the walls of buildings, or with chalk on sidewalks or streets, or, yes, on the plain dirt and mud of obscure villages in distant nations – has to begin with an acknowledgement such as Anna Freud made: there are in each of us certain private reasons for noticing THIS, for summoning THAT, for wanting to see one aspect of reality given a degree of permanence and for having no such interest that another aspect of that reality should have any visual life whatsoever.”

I can never begin to come close to accomplishing what Levitt did in her body of work about children’s wall drawings, not would I even pretend to. But in a nod to her, I spent some time photographing the drawings I found on walls and chalkboards at the orphanage in Uganda. These, of course, don’t even begin to take into account the artwork the kids made on paper and canvas during art classes. These are simply quiet little expressions that I found scribbled here and there.

I will post a few over the course of the next couple of days. Enjoy… and in the meantime, go out and get yourself a copy of a Helen Levitt book if you don’t already have one. Her work is pure genius.

moments

Think about all the moments we get in a day, a month, a year, our lives. Moments are all around us. They bombard us. They caress us. They call out to us. They challenge us.

I say: grab ’em.

I had so many amazing moments in Uganda, too many to ever fully explain or even comprehend. But there were also moments (fortunately so few I can count them on one hand) when I felt restless or frustrated or tired. I tried really hard to take these times and turn them into opportunities. One morning we were driving up to the orphanage, making our way slowly along the rutted dirt road. I have to admit on this particular morning I was feeling the weight of being “trip leader.” I decided to hop out of the van before we reached St. Mary Kevin’s and just roam around the neighborhood that butts up against the grounds of the orphanage to grab a few moments for myself, by myself.




It’s hard to explain just how exhilarated I became, literally within minutes of greeting strangers along the road, laughing and playing around with them, and most important, making photographs. There is truly something magical that happens to me when I am turned loose in a new place where there are friendly, generous people who are open to collaborating with me in my picture-making endeavors. I am hardly ever let down in these situations. I can always count on them to lift my spirits and transport me to another place. These times are collections of wondrous moments that invigorate me and make me feel glad to be alive. I know it sounds trite, but it is true... deeply so.

It’s kind of like a dancing. And I love to dance.

One afternoon, I got really exasperated with something that was going on, and I just picked myself up and took a long walk, again in the small village. You have to picture it – everyone is outside. Women are preparing meals or washing clothes, kids are running around, men are gathered together talking or selling things at makeshift stands. There is music in the background. These moments are brimming with life. I happened to walk past a group of children who were throwing and kicking a ball around in their yard and made this picture of a moment, what Henri Cartier-Bresson might call a “decisive” moment.



It is one of my favorite photographs from the entire trip. I wasn't planning on being in this place, with this child, in this situation, but the moment presented itself, and I wasn't about to look or walk the other way.

There are so many possibilities in all these moments we get. It’s a pretty cool deal, isn't it?

an email from rosemary to the friends of change the truth

Happy New Year.

Thanks very much for bringing so many souls of African children back to hope and happiness. For sure I and Joseph had given up on any special meals for the children for Xmas. To my surprise when I came back from up country in search for cheap food, I could not believe the good news of the e-mail from Change the Truth friends. It was amazing and beyond my measure. For real you are doing wonders for the children and all the beneficiaries and God bless you.

We all love you,

Rosemary

luck

Eddie and I walked along the beach our last full day on Captiva Island yesterday, even though the wind was howling, the sand was blowing, and it was downright cold.

The sea was green and churning against the darkening sky.

My camera battery ran out. End of the trip, forgot to bring a charger; I was resigned to quit shooting.

But it was so beautiful out.

I removed the battery, shook it around a bit, huffed some warm breath on it and said a few magic words. Popped it back in the camera, and lo and behold, it decided to sputter to life for a few more seconds.


That’s when I was given this gift of a photo.

Here are some elements that excite me about a photograph (made by me or anybody else):

1. movement
2. enigma (“Don’t SHOW me what was going on, make me WONDER what was going on.” ~ Keith Carter)
3. use of the edges of the frame
4. layering
5. atmosphere
6. a square that is not a square (“Break the square, Gloria!” ~ Mary Ellen Mark)
7. compositional shapes that mirror one another

The photo goddesses were in my corner yesterday. woo-hoo!

dcis

I have spent a lot of time lately thinking about the purpose of this blog. I started it as way to keep my friends and family informed as I headed off to Uganda in the fall of 2006. I kept it going after my return because I was still processing photos, establishing Change the Truth, as well as exploring the magnitude of the trip and how it had affected me. Posts about the orphans in Africa sometimes transitioned into musings about life as a mother of a high school senior and as a photographer making pictures on road trips across Kansas and Missouri, etc. I figured I’d quit blogging when I had nothing else to talk about or no new photos to share, but then those musings turned to focusing on preparations for a second trip to Uganda, the trip itself and well… here I am, posting about my family’s vacation in Florida and wondering if it’s time to close up shop. After all, how long can I expect people to maintain even a modicum of interest in what I am doing or thinking or saying or shooting?

My daughter recently suggested that most people who journal or keep diaries do so with the secret wish that someone will eventually read them.

If this is true, then the explosive popularity of blogging makes a lot of sense. No secret wish is involved, though, and certainly there is no time lapse before readers get a peek; the words and sentiments zoom onto the cyber highway full speed ahead – and everyone can see them immediately with only a couple of clicks.

Someone else, an extremely well read woman who happens to be a terrific writer with a gentle, sensitive soul, wrote me recently in response to a question I asked her about the possibility of getting too personal on the blog. (I know her only through the wonders of blogging and email; I’ve been fortunate to “meet” many amazing people this way – a benefit I hadn’t even imagined when I first started this process.) Her letter was kind and reassuring. She said, “One aspect of your writing that has impressed me is that you have tackled some of the darker issues in a way that casts light upon them. Your writing has never slipped into the morose. You have celebrated life even in the face of death. The writing about your mom's illness and death, pieces about concentration camps and survivors, the pieces about the situation in Uganda, and the entries about cancer survivors. You presented those with (this phrase is overdone but is appropriate here) grace and dignity. You informed and taught while -- casting the light -- while enlightening the reader. You have brought us all into the kinds of real-life, real-death crises that people face. Part of the realization is that, ‘We are not alone.’ A comment stuck with me from C.S. Lewis. He was asked, ‘Why do we read?’ ‘We read to learn that we are not alone.’ You have shown peoples of all colors and religions and, more, shown that what makes us alike is far greater than what makes us different. Our hearts all beat the same. Our hands all join together. What makes us alive is each other.”


At the risk of scaring away (or boring) some readers, I am giving myself permission to delve into something more personal than usual. I don’t want to turn this blog into anything other than it currently is – a collection of thoughts and photographs and a tool for keeping everyone up to date on the children we are helping in Uganda. I will continue to write about photography, my family, next year’s medical mission to Uganda and whatever else pops into my life. But I also now intend to occasionally write about the breast cancer with which I have been recently diagnosed, because it definitely pulsates just beneath the surface of everything I do or think about these days. If I avoid it much longer on the blog, it will feel as if I am being less than honest.

I am not aiming for any sympathy or pity. This is just another experience in my life, and I obviously (for good or bad) enjoy sharing my experiences with people who genuinely seem interested in how things affect me, my way of thinking and the photographs that I subsequently make.

Fortunately, what I have - ductal carcinoma in situ - is considered a very early stage of cancer (some even define DCIS as a “pre-cancer”); it is non-invasive and highly treatable, so the prognosis is a good one. They say (those smart “they” people, whoever they are) that if you are going to get breast cancer, this is the one you want to get.


Making my way to the other side of being “well” is likely, in my particular case, to involve some challenging stuff. I will probably share some of that with you, my kind and loyal readers. You have, in a sense, become a circle of support for me over the past 15 months. Perhaps some of you have gone through a similar health experience; hearing from you would be really nice.

So, maybe that is ultimately why I have kept this blog going: sharing – and the knowledge that… we are not alone.