I am frequently asked how it is that I came to be a photographer and I thought I'd take a moment to share with you not so much how, but why!
My Father was an avid photographer and he loved shooting film reels and stills. I was a small girl when he would come home on leave and bring with him reel footage and still photographs from the his post in Vietnam. Many of the photographs I was not allowed to view until I was much older. It was from his perspective of the images he thought worth recording, that I developed a love of photojournalism.
My Grandparents saved every Time, Life and National Geographic magazine that was ever delivered to their home. So, it was in my teenage years while staying summers with them that I had the incredible opportunity to view some of the most inspiring black and white photographs ever taken: from war correspondence to celebrity profiles. For the photographers shooting for these magazines at the time, everything was ground breaking and I wondered what would be left for me to shoot?
And it was by watching my young and beautiful mother that I developed the love of portraiture. Not only would I watch my Father, try to capture her radiant smile but I would watch her read magazines filled with the most beautiful women of the time; women like Elizabeth Taylor and Katharine Hepburn. I would study the light even then to see how it effected the image and what their expressions might mean. I watched her dress and up do her bee hive and I would wonder, could I take a picture that would capture my Mother's beauty like those in the magazine?
So I came by the love of this medium, honestly. It was instilled in me a little at a time. It came from the classic portraits of the 40's and 50's and the documentary evidence of the destruction of war. When I look back, my life is a still Poloroid, a wrinkled black and white, a shiny 8x10 glossy, a crisp magazine page, an Ansel Adams' calendar from the feed store, an Elvis album cover and picture post card from Yosemite National Park.
Photograph taken by my Father of my Mother in Germany, 1963
