The design process for the "Farm Together Now" book is quickly moving along. Right now, I'm taking a break from digging through my notes, double checking the spelling of names, and writing photo captions. And a couple days ago, while doing a final edit of pix for the book's endpaper, these two faces popped up in combination on my Lightroom screen. The photo of Julian, a Wisconsin organic dairyman paired itself with Chris, a vegan food security worker in Atlanta. Some things you just can not plan. Sometimes the clouds open up and illuminate the landscape. Or the brain.
All portraiture references the photographer, quivers with the tone of our own vocal chords, pounds out our own heart beat. We tell other people's stories, but always by framing the light bouncing off our own retina. More than mere "style," a photograph is both a document of the relationships we forge with our subjects and a thinly-disguised self-portrait. Me thinks.
Leonard Freed put it this way: "I was here. I was hot. I was cold. I was happy. I was angry. I experienced this. It took time. It is a part of my life. I remember the situations. It is not just a photograph, but a life experience. They are my people, my characters. They are all me."
Julian and Chris and Jim and Lane, Devon, Joel, Kirstin, Sam...they are all me.
Great article in this week's New Yorker about George Steinmetz, the first photographer I ever assisted and also one of the hardest working, and most hilarious, guys out there. George taught me how to load a Nikon in an instant, pack a flight case to the max and run for the final boarding call. He flys an ultralight paraglider over the sunset sands of the Sahara and beyond, shooting down from as high as 1000 feet. He says the best stuff is often at 500 feet, following Robert Capa's advice, "If your pictures aren't good enough, you're not close enough." 
Sky in the Pie space, which I started back in 2007, continues on the corner of 25th and Mission. Sam Slater (on the left) created "The View From Here" by teaching high schoolers at Pie Ranch about photography and public art. He encouraged the students to work with "the camera as tool, much the way a farmer uses tools to harvest a crop that has been planted and nurtured." He continues, "Each week students took 35mm manual cameras into their own environments, with the goal of harvesting their perspectives and offering them up the their community." The results of their explorations can be seen outside Mission Pie.
