A Rock, A River, A Tree

I work in a law office of 50 people and in the same week, we had a birth, a funeral and a wedding. I took photographs to commemorate two of those events (links above) and maybe because of that, last week felt more important and more tangible to me.

For our office manager, ordering flowers to send to these respective events, it probably seemed just like any other week. All offices are filled with the details of our personal lives that can interfere with efficiency.

Last week was just an intersection.

But for me, last week, I witnessed a lifespan unfold in what seemed like a few moments -- thrilling and scary, solemn and beautiful, all at the same time. The human condition in fast forward.

The thing about photography and writing, I suppose, is that part of its primary purpose is to witness and testify, both of which are terms of art (no pun intended) that surround my legal practice, and frequently come up at church. I didn't realize they pervade my hobbies as well.

When I look through my camera's viewfinder, I am searching for that which I can empathize, what I would be feeling if I were the subject, what I would want to see if were in the frame, to find myself in the subject's experience. For me, an image should be relevant to the person in it. But there's that legal standard creeping in again. Evidence only comes into play if it is first relevant.

I'm sure someone else has put this much more articulately, but what I love about photography, writing and representing people is the feeling of connectedness with other people and in turn the world, finding universality in the details of our lives, and helping people tell their stories, testify. Birth, love, death, ache, joy, desperation, comfort. Maya Angelou's words on this topic have driven my career and motivated me since I first read them when I was seventeen, "...that beneath the skin, beyond the differing features and into the true heart of being, fundamentally, we are more alike, my friends, than we are unalike."

I think I needed to be reminded of that. In the days after 9/11, or the tsunami, or hurricane Katrina, we didn't have to be reminded of how that is all that matters: birth, love and the inevitability of death. It was right there on the tip of all of our tongues. People got married, had babies, quit jobs and made big decisions realizing the importance of carpe diem.

The morning of 9/11, my parents flew over the twin towers just a few hours before the fell. I lived across the country from them and the rest of my family. I stared a the TV, like everyone else, horrified. So many people were carrying photographs of missing loved ones. The photos were testimonies to their love, desperation, and inevitable loss. What I most remember about that day was the photos people held of their wedding days, of their brides or grooms, of their mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, co-workers. Our connectedness never felt more real.

That afternoon, I went to Kroger to stockpile baking supplies because that's what you do when the world is ending and you are Southern. My boyfriend (now husband) realized he had forgotten the Kroger Plus card (a must for students) and went home to get it, leaving me in the frozen foods section holding a bag of chicken breasts. I was in the exact same spot when he returned, lost in thought about how I wanted to make sure he would be able to find me, unlike the wandering people on TV, and how maybe the world wouldn't collapse if I made something warm that my Grandmother Viola once taught me to make when she was alive and we were together in the safety of her sunlit kitchen.

Feeling what these three families are going through --birth, death, marriage of two families-- was such a gift to me and brought me closer to my own feelings of the fragility and raw beauty of life, even in it's cruelties.

But this morning, as Maya writes, "on the pulse of this new day," I went back into the office, stepped into the elevator and, "looked into my sister's eyes, into my brother's face, my country and said, very simply with hope, Good Morning."