Why Documentary Photography?

For most of my childhood my dad traveled the world as a photojournalist for a major US newspaper.  Bringing my brother and me home pieces of the Berlin Wall, small stones from the dead sea, a chunk of rubber that came straight from a rubber-tapping tree in the Amazon rainforest.  Even in the stories that were difficult to tell, he always found the humanity in the story.  His photographs salvaged small pieces of beauty from situations sometimes wrecked with devastation.  The warmth of a woman's smile as she leans against the door frame of her sisters shanty-home in a South African Township.  A shaft of light shining through a Czech flag raised above a sea of people during a rally for independence.  The intense beauty of a stark, foreign landscape.  These were the images I was raised with - this profound example of what photography can do.  How it can shine a light into even the darkest place and show that there still exists the enduring story of human kindness.

My love for Documentary Photography comes from a deep conviction that there is profound beauty and meaning in the human experience and that we are meant to be witnesses for it.  To be moved by it, changed by it, and to allow it to fill our souls until we are brimming over with the sheer abundance of it.

This is how I approach all my sessions regardless of the subject or assignment - for my camera and I to be a thoughtful witness to the story I have been asked to tell.

Photographer Berenice Abbott said, "Photography helps people to see."  As photographers, writers, artists, journalists and storytellers we have the privilege of using our unique perspective to help others see the world around us in a new way.