"Womanhood," Africa Dreamed Collection: A woman in the village of Diagourou near Tera, Niger wears the traditional silver jewelry of the Fulani people. Diagourou is a 5-km, very sandy motorcycle ride from the town of Tera, where I lived during my third year as a Peace Corps volunteer. I was working with the National Guinea Worm Eradication Program and was responsible for supervising the Guinea worm health education volunteers based in Diagourou County. While I pressed the shutter button on my SLR camera to capture this fleeting moment in 1998, it was only in the last few months of 2008 that I began to explore a new process of “developing” my photographs. The resulting images, including "Womanhood," form my “Africa Dreamed” series, made by combining two copies of each single photograph, each copy changed from the original in a certain way. The juxtaposition of these two “revised” copies results in the final effect. This is the Africa of my dreams—the Africa that calls me, that won’t let me go, that makes me fall in love over and over again.
A photographer friend of mine, Chuck Cecil, recently recommended to me the new David duChemin book, “VisionMongers: Making a Life and a Living in Photography.” I immediately ordered it from Amazon.com and devoured all 250 pages in about four days. I have a profound respect for David’s work, and it was interesting to read about the meandering path that he, like many other photographers, took through various careers before finally succumbing to the calling of a vocation in photography.
In his book, David, now a travel and humanitarian photographer, talks about the iconic portrait of Sharbat Gula. Photographed by Steve McCurry in 1984, the piercing green eyes of this Afghan refugee have entranced many a National Geographic reader. It’s interesting because if you were to ask me to name the single image that I will never forget, it’s that same portrait. I’m not sure how old I was or what year it was when I first saw it – I was still in elementary school in 1984 – but David saw that photowhen he was in high school. It spurred him to shadow a local photographer for a few days, but despite this, after graduating, he spent the next five years studing theology at two Canadian colleges. Although he continued to shoot during those years in the cold Canadian prairies, in his own words, “And then I graduated and, again, followed the traditional path of all frustrated photographers with a theology degree: I went into comedy and spent 12 years performing.” Over those next 12 years, he shot on and off until one day, he bought a little Canon PowerShot point-and-shoot camera, and his passion for photography came rushing back. Eventually, he had the opportunity to travel to Haiti both as a comedian and a photographer for a small development organization, and that was the start of his new career as a vocational photographer.
I always enjoy hearing about how other photographers have come to realize their photographic calling. So many of us have followed that same meandering path. I myself didn’t start “for real” until long after college. But my story really begins with the summer between my junior and senior years, when I got a summer job working in a neurobiology lab at the University of Madison in Wisconsin. That summer changed my life, and I wouldn’t be sitting here today writing this blog post if it weren’t for that summer. Why? Well, because that was the summer that I lived in an international co-op surrounded by students studying various foreign languages in preparation for semesters abroad. A Returned Peace Corps Volunteer from Benin – Chris – also lived in that co-op, and he somehow inspired me to join the Peace Corps and to go to Africa. A total idealist at heart, I had this vision of helping people while walking barefoot in the sand and learning to play handdrums. It somehow didn’t turn out that way…
Anyway, just before leaving for Niger in West Africa (which, like most new volunteers, I had to first search for on a map), my dad asked me if I wanted him to buy me a camera, and I said, no, why would I ever need a camera? (I bet that wasn’t the response you expected, huh?) And I left with no camera. A month later, I was back on the phone…Dad, can you send me a camera? And send one he did – a Canon EOS Elan IIe film SLR with two lenses – a wide angle and zoom.
For me, it was my interest in experiencing and documenting new places, cultures, and people that drew me into photography. I loved the experience and challenge of integrating into a completely foreign culture, and I loved learning and speaking new languages. And I loved the vibrant colors of West Africa and turning the fleeting moments that passed me by into timeless pieces of history. But I knew nothing about my camera, aside from how to press the shutter button and change my lenses.
There we are, the group of Guinea Worm Peace Corps Volunteers with the Ministry of Health, at the annual Wodaabe Gerewol Festival in the desert between Maradi and Agadez. (That's me in the dark sweatshirt.) At the beginning of this blog post, I mentioned my photographer friend, Chuck Cecil. Well, Chuck was actually the US Ambassador to Niger when I was there, which is how we first met. We reconnected in 2008 when we found out that we were both photographers.
When I returned to the US 3 1/2 years later in 1999, I started a long career in international development, working for various non-governmental organizations (NGOs, non-profits) providing humanitarian assistance and implementing food security and public health programs in Africa and Asia. I only pulled out my camera when I traveled, and during my first few years back, I was too junior to travel much at all. Then, in 2005, I took a job as the Malaria Technical Advisor in South Sudan for a social marketing and public health NGO called Population Services International, and I sold my first camera – that Canon Elan IIe – on Craigslist and bought a new Canon digital SLR, plus my first book on photography, “The Basic Book of Photography” by Tom and Michelle Grimm. And like David, that ability to immediately see my images on the LCD, learn from my mistakes, and understand how to improve my photography, thanks to the invention and new affordability of the digital camera, kindled a passion for photography that I hadn’t – until that moment – realized existed.
After two years in South Sudan, I returned to the US, and this move home became yet another turning point. I started reading everything I could find both online and off. I became a sponge absorbing more and more information. My first love was travel/cultural photography - and really people photography – because for me, the travel was always really about the people. But now, I became interested in ALL kinds of photography. I tried nature, macro, landscapes, architecture, night photography…everything you can think of. And in late 2007, my photography business was born. By now, I’ve figured out what I’m most passionate about – and what I do best – and that’s people, travel/cultural, landscapes, and architecture.
And this is why today, I’d love to work with you to photograph your family, wedding, or event … because I believe that you have a story too … an important one that’s made up of fleeting moments, but that deserves to be remembered and cherished by generations to come. So if you’re looking for a photographer who’s going to do everything she possibly can to allow you to walk off into the sunset worry-free, then pick up the phone and call me!
And if you’re a photographer yourself, I bet your path has been an interesting one too. I’d love to hear your story. Feel free to tell it to us in the comments below.
(If you don’t see the comments section below, then you’ll need to click on the title of this blog post.)
14th annual Henry Arthur Callis Beautillion Scholarship Gala
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