Making the Concious Choice

2010 was a life changing year for me. I lived through one of the world's largest natural disasters, and through that experience I re-evaluated where my life was going and what steps I needed to take for my own happiness and well being. It has been a year of love, and intensely painful loss. A year where I questioned everything I was or am.

In some ways I think I was floating a little aimlessly at the beginning of 2010, which frankly is pretty rare for me. I always have a plan. But I arrived in Haiti and could not get back on my feet professionally. I just didn't know where to start, and I was tired. Tired of forcing myself to recreate myself on a continual basis. I took a job at the embassy, and lugged my camera around on the weekends with no real purpose except to post on our personal blog for friends and families following our adventures.

I know now that there is a reason for all these things, if I had not taken the embassy job, I would of been evacuated with the other spouses in Haiti. I would not of been allowed to stay, and the truth is I needed to stay. Not because the work I was doing couldn't be done by someone else, but because I needed to learn some things about who I am as a person, as a photographer, and as a human being.

Living in the disaster zone, and knowing that the photographs/video coming across CNN are someones family, their friends, their very heartbeat. Seeing your friends and colleagues online or on television, or worse never seeing them again is something that has affected the way I photograph forever. I think that I will forever be aware what my photographs portray not only to my immediate world but to the people affected by their content. Because as much as photographers want to say they are simply documenting the world around them, the truth is that we make conscious decisions with every exposure and composition that affect the way that photograph is presented. It is our decisions, our eyes, our minds that create the photograph. And in some instances, our perspective may be the only one that people have the opportunity to see. There comes a point when every photographer has to grapple with the consequences of what we decide to shoot, or what we decide not to shoot.

Post earthquake, I wasn't a photographer. I was a person. I was highly emotional, damaged, broken, a minute spec of humanity. There was no separation between me and the scene I was in the middle of. I didn't take pictures, I wasn't capable of documenting what was around me. I worked in housing and helped my friends and colleagues get back into their homes, collect their belongings, and found new homes so that they could have some shred of normalcy while they worked long hours trying to put back together all that was broken. It was mindless, and numbing, but that is what I needed at the time. Now I am often asked by people to see my photos of Haiti post quake. I have a great blurb all prepared that always comes sounding a little hollow sounding. Perhaps I did miss out of the career making moment of my life, the fast track, the photographic opportunity of a lifetime. But regardless, I am simply who I am and I can't change anything in the past, only what lies ahead in the future.

So this past year, has led me to think. What kind of photographer do I want to be? In March I flew to Uganda and did a workshop specializing in non-profits with Momenta Workshops. Through my experience in Haiti, I knew that I wanted to create pictures with a purpose. I think that by taking the workshop, I took my first major step forward in what will be the recreation of myself and my work.  Working in Uganda was my own personal form of therapy. Here was another country that had lived through a war, and yet there organizations actively participating in it's rebuilding. They were picking up the pieces, which led me to believe that it could be done.

I came back to Haiti and worked with ACDI-Voca in my final months there on some of their agricultural projects in  around Jacmel. And there I found some satisfaction and healing in doing work with non-profits. Perhaps the knowledge that there are organizations that understand the needs of Haiti and are bringing about change in a sustainable fashion that do not undercut the few existing economies that Haitians have left was enough. That was the small glimmer of hope that I needed to see.

Dom and I finished our tour in Haiti, and came home for a few months of sorely needed relaxation and recuperation. I took my new direction very seriously, and spent a good portion of my time revamping my website, my business connections, and reaching out to non-profits that were located in our newest destination, Lusaka, Zambia.

I arrived in Lusaka shortly before Christmas, and have been learning all the nuances of getting an international work permit. But the new year is spread before me with all the promise it possesses, the old year is behind me with one of the largest milestones that I have ever conquered.  And this questions remains: What kind of photographer do I want to be? And in this question I find comfort, simply in it's existence. Because the question is not whether I want to be a photographer, because the truth is that is what I am. It is a much a part of me as the air I breath. So this year I am choosing what kind of photographer I will be, and I choose simply, to be a conscious one. I understand that my actions, my finger on the shutter, my conscious choice creates my photographs. I choose to be more aware of my subjects, their circumstances, their culture, their needs, their wants, and my place in their world.