nelson-atkins museum of art

I'm happy to share that the Nelson has acquired these two photographs! This is truly an honor for me.

henry

I am really lucky to have a sweet, soulful grandson who doesn't mind that I want to make pictures of him. In fact, he's been very cooperative.

I made several portraits of Henry on this recent trip to New Orleans, but this is my favorite. He's experiencing some changes in his life now that he has a baby sister. When I took him to the play center he went right for the baby dolls (well, after he played with Thomas, Gordon, James and Toby at the train table) and cared for them with such kindness I was almost brought to tears. He fed them, patted them, burped them, swaddled them and then put them into bed for their naps. He was caring for four babies at one point, and they were all called Clara.

I hear that the next change in store for Henry might be his first haircut.

So I'm glad I was able to capture him with his babies and his long hair on this particular recent morning at the play center.

george

This is my father's caregiver. George has been with Dad for seven years. He's a sweet, loyal and very good man. He's 82 years old.

my father and my son

girls rock!

What better day than International Women's Day to announce that four of the five students who recently received Change the Truth sponsorships for secondary school are female!

The enthusiastic and delighted young women who have just begun first their term at St. Noa Secondary School are, from left to right: Joanne, Nahia, Rose and Fiona. Thanks to the continued and generous support of CTT donors, this bright group of students will now be able to fulfill childhood dreams of attaining higher education. The doors to their future are wide open. Success will require a lot of hard work on their part over the course of the next several years, but I have no doubt that these young women will step up and grab the opportunity by the tail. They are fearless, strong and determined.

Watch out, world!

my mom

This past week would have been my mother's 90th birthday. She passed away in 2005. Each year at this time I think of her and try to imagine what she might be like now had she not fallen terminally ill and died at the age of 82.

In honor of her birthday, I thought I'd share a few pictures I made of her over the years. Anita didn't particularly like having her picture taken, but she was usually a good sport around me simply because she understood that photography was my passion.

c.1960

with my dad and brother, early 60's

1972

c. 1974

with my dad, 1976

with my kids, 1989

1999

2005

rosemary and vincent + helena and jack

This is a great way to end the week!

Hopefully you feel like you know Rosemary and Vincent by now. They were befriended by my pal Anna back in 2009 when she was living and photographing in a small, rural village in southwest Uganda. The two children had no parents and were taking care of their ailing grandmother. Anna contacted me and asked if the children could go live at SMK. The rest is, as they say, history.

This past fall when I was at SMK, Vincent became very ill. You may recall that he had both malaria and pneumonia, and that we had to take him to a nearby clinic for a few days. I was absolutely blown away by the way Rosemary took care of her brother. During that time, I got to know both of them pretty well. I was told by big sis in a hushed but urgent tone that neither had cases for their belongings, no underwear and no school uniforms or shoes.

Remember Helena? She's a young friend of Anna's. She and her little brother Jack decided in 2010 to become best friends and supporters of Rosemary and Vincent. They have been raising money for them ever since. The money helps pay for Rosemary and Vincent's school fees.

And now that money  has gone toward uniforms, shoes, underwear and cases!!

A photo of the the happy siblings arrived in my inbox this morning. Thanks, Melissa, for brightening this gloomy, grey Kansas City morning. And thanks, Helena and Jack, for being the amazing children that you are. I hope one day you'll get to meet your friends from half way around the world. A pizza party would be fun, don't you think?

Rosemary in her village, 2009 (Photo by Anna)

Rosemary and Vincent arrive at SMK, 2009

Helena 

Helena and Jack's collection jar

Rosemary and her friend take care of Vincent in the clinic, September, 2012

Rosemary and Vincent, February 2013

a photo a day

"Taking pictures is savoring life intensely, every hundredth of a second." - Mark Riboud

What fun I've had continuing this project. Now it will have to be on hold until I return to Portland this summer. I did make a few images I'm very happy with.

a photo a day

“You don’t make a photograph just with a camera. You bring to the act of photography all the pictures you have seen, the books you have read, the music you have heard, the people you have loved.”  – Ansel Adams

Still wandering the streets of Portland looking for those moments when, if I'm lucky, all of those things might converge. Adams' sentiment is a lovely one, isn't it?

drawing

I'm dividing my time between photographing and drawing while here in Portland. Not a bad way to spend a few days.

a photograph a day

‎"Stare. It is the way to educate your eye, and more. Stare, pry, listen. Eavesdrop. Die knowing something. You are not here long." - Walker Evans

I'm back in Portland photographing. Here's what I made today.

exhausting and exhilarating

Going through years of work is a daunting task, but one I've undertaken for the sake of the show I'm having in May.

There are images I've always kind of liked but have never printed. There are images that didn't work for me ten years ago that make sense to me now. There are pictures that just needed a little cropping (which I never used to do, but in my older and wiser stage now allow), and there are pictures that suddenly blossom when placed in a new context.

I'm excited and energized and realize once again that I am so lucky to get to do what I love - and that what I love to do - making pictures - is just about the coolest thing on earth.

snow day

From my window today I got to watch a foot of snow fall on the neighborhood.

Kind of a meditative and beautiful thing.

leah

Here is a wonderful article about Leah (Team 6). It is hot off the presses of the Kansas City Jewish Chronicle. So proud of you, Leah!

Read it here.

on the way home from shooting furniture

Bob Greenspan is a commercial photographer based in KC. He did a photojournalistic stint at the Kansas City Star years ago, but now he shoots products and buildings. He was on his way home from his midtown studio last night (having just shot some furniture for a client) when the explosion at JJ's Restaurant took place. Apparently, his car windows were rolled up, and he had music playing, so he didn't hear the blast. He just saw the sudden massive plume of smoke and then the flames. Bob pulled over, got out of his car and grabbed the Canon he had in his trunk. His photojournalistic instincts kicked in, and he started shooting even before any sirens sounded. Of all the pictures I've seen of the horrific scenes from last night, Greenspan's are among the most powerful.


On his Facebook page, he wrote: “It was a very surreal scene, with victims wandering out like zombies — obviously in shock.”

Still hard for me to believe this took place just a few blocks from my home.

explosion

Last night there was a natural gas leak, explosion and fire at JJ's, a beloved restaurant here in Kansas City. It was a cool place - locally owned and operated by Jimmy and his brother David for 27 years.

JJ's is completely gone now. Neighboring businesses, offices and homes were affected, as well. One body was found in the charred remains this morning, and three people are still in critical condition at nearby hospitals.

It's a sad, gloomy day in Kansas City.

After meeting a friend for coffee this morning, I drove as close as I could to the block where JJ's had stood. I guess I wanted to physically be part of the community that is dealing with this tragedy hands-on. I also wanted to get a picture or two to post here on the blog. Of course, the police have the whole area marked off, and there's no way to get too close right now.

As I pulled up to our condo, I saw this one lonely helicopter hovering in the sky. I had fallen asleep to its drone last night, and I can hear it even now as it circles high above the Plaza, the area where JJ's was and which is only a few blocks away.

It struck me as sad. Which is the way everyone in KC is feeling today.

change the case

Change the Truth's own Dawn Taylor (Team 5) and her good friend Christina Eldridge have started an entrepreneurial venture, Red Dirt Shop, a socially responsible business selling cell phone covers with original designs by artists. A portion of each sale will go to Water.org, providing access to clean water for people all over the world.

Several artists' works have already been chosen to grace the cell phone cases when Red Dirt makes its launch in March.

Dawn felt strongly - from the very beginning - about including the artwork made by some special young friends who live in Uganda. She pored over the drawings and paintings that the children at the orphanage have made during the past few years and selected two: one by Brian and one by Nicky.

The young artists will be paid for the use of their artwork; the money will go toward their education. As you can well imagine, the boys were thrilled to hear all about this! (Melissa reported that Brian flashed his huge grin, then simply shook his head in disbelief.)

Maybe one of these days, when Brian and Nicky are walking down the street in Kampala, they'll turn to see someone chatting on his/her cell phone and catch a glimpse of their own colorful artwork - loud and proud on a Red Dirt case. Wouldn't that be something?

And in the meantime time, Water.org and both the boys will benefit from the venture.

Red Dirt's motto is "Change the Case" because they want to encourage their clientele to think about having more than one case, kind of like more than one scarf or more than one purse. So, if it catches on, I bet we'll have more drawings from our kids purchased and featured!

Check out Red Dirt's page on Facebook and stay tuned for their big launch next month! We wish Dawn and Christina much luck. Personally, I'd like to thank them for diving into the world of social entrepreneurship and for including Nicky and Brian in the first round of cases.

can you see me now?

That's the title of my solo show that's coming up in May.

It's turned into kind of a retrospective, which means I have been sifting through lots of old work, some of which I've never even printed before.

I'm hoping for a few surprises for the viewers, a few new twists on some old work, some thought-provoking pairings of seemingly disparate images and an opportunity for us all to have some fun (and maybe even gain some new perspectives) with the pictures I've been making for the past 56 years.

(Yikes.)

I'm also hoping to publish a catalogue to accompany the show.

And I'm very much hoping you will come to the opening.

SAVE THE DATE: MAY 11th!!
The Bohemian Gallery
Overland Park, Kansas

portrait

Here is a new picture I made this week at Operation Breakthrough. This boy has seen and been through a lot in his few short years.

can't get enough of vivian maier

“The Greatest Photo Collection Never Seen

Since Vivian Maier’s photographs were unearthed at an auction several years back, her work and her story have captivated people across the world. The idea that a lifelong nanny was secretly an astoundingly good street photographer—that the greatest collection of photos of Chicago from the 1950s through the 1970s had been sitting undiscovered in storage unit on the South Side—prompted blog post after blog post, story after story, exhibit after exhibit. Most of these offered very little in terms of biographical information about the highly private Maier, who didn’t seem to have any family or close friends.

But surely there had been someone. A secret lover? A neighbor turned confidant, who would turn up and explain what drove Maier to carry a camera around her neck every day of her life, to capture beautiful, moving, and humorous portraits and scenes and share them with no one? Co-authors Richard Cahan and Michael Williams spent the last year attempting to fill the gaps in the story of Vivian Maier. They contacted just about every home she’d worked in, interviewed the children she cared for, the neighbors who watched her with skepticism as she pointed her camera into garbage cans. They found the people who repaired her cameras and those who sold her film. And the answer, sadly, for those of us hoping to get even further into Vivian Maier’s brain, is no. There was no one. Maier’s only partner in life, her only confidant, was her camera.

The images below, along with the majority of the other images in Cahan and Williams’ book Vivian Maier: Out of the Shadows have never before been seen. She kept them locked away from the families she worked for, never sharing them with anyone—even herself. The images come from 20,000 scanned negatives that don’t appear ever to have been printed during her lifetime.

This is the second book of Maier’s work to emerge since the reports about the cache of images went viral in early 2011. The first, Vivian Maier: Street Photographer, was a selection of the images won at auction by collector and Chicago historian John Maloof. This new book features those in the possession of another collector, Jeff Goldstein. Cahan and Williams, who specialize in sifting through old photos,  reached out to Goldstein soon after they learned about the discovery. 

The moment before Williams delved into the archive, he felt exhilaration and anxiety. The whole photography world was talking about incredibly talented ‘nanny street photographer’ and he was going to see a big chunk of her collection before anyone else. But what if they weren’t any good? What if the quality of the 80 or so that had inspired the initial praise, was just a fluke.

Quickly his fear disappeared. ‘From the moment I started going through I saw this was a really serious collection and she is serious photographer,’ Williams recalls. These new images span four decades and her travels across America and Europe. Because Maier’s camera was constantly with her, the act of going through the scanned negatives was like entering this mysterious woman’s head and reliving day after day, week after week.

‘The process of going through them for me was hypnotizing,’ he says. Initially he was looking for one theme to emerge, but then he realized that the dominant subject was obvious: Maier's life. 

As Wiliams made his final edit he did not attempt to highlight the most impressive photos in the collection, rather he attempted to build a sequence that would tell Maier’s story. Paging through the book, we watch Maier developing her photographic eye in postwar France, charming strangers on the beach of Lake Michigan, wandering through the roughest parts of Chicago, and expressing a photojournalistic sensibility at the Democratic National Convention of 1968. We are with her as her eyes move from a dog looking at the sky to the sky itself and as her interests transition from sweet babies on the beach to political pamphlets decrying abortion.

It’s unclear why Vivian Maier did not appear to have these rolls printed. Perhaps she ran out of money or could not keep up with sheer volume of photos she’d taken. Or perhaps she simply didn’t need to. In a time when photography has become so intertwined with instant gratification (Instagram likes, Facebook shares, Tumblr notes) it’s easy to forget that for some the act of photography is entirely about process. Vivian Maier carefully documented every day of her life. The motivation, this latest book suggests, wasn’t to see the results on shiny paper or to impress others, but to process them in her mind.”

This article was written by Heather Murphy for Slate