May all the dreamers go forth

Congratulations to all the finalists in the “Name Your Dream Assignment” photographer’s competition. There will only be one cash winner, but I hope others keep going on their dream ideas. Many of these ideas do not require a $50K cash prize to accomplish.

I was heartened and inspired by the ideas, the comments, and the professionalism that came forth from this. My idea (“Shooting Without Guns,” Afghanistan) ended up at 58th, which was far better than I expected to do having entered only on March 27.

It was a real testament to networking. Having to campaign for the votes put me back in touch with many colleagues that I had not heard from or written to in a long time. I’ve been away from overseas work, and this dream contest made me realize how much I want to go back.

The comments were very moving. I made many new contacts, too. And best of all, I got three job offers to go back to Afghanistan because of this contest.

I hope that all of those who are sincere about their dreams will now work diligently to find the way to pursue them. There is ALWAYS a way.

You can read about my idea and see all the comments by following the link here

The top 100 are here

What Katherine Saw

My niece Katherine wrote me the other day, out of the blue. I have not seen her in six or eight years, I think. She is my niece by virtue of the fact that she calls me “Auntie” and that her mother, Penny, is like a sister to me; we played racquetball together when she was pregnant with Katherine.

Katherine is now 14, um, 12 years old, and she had an assignment to write about a painting that inspired her. She went to my web site and contacted me from there, saying that the photos were “breathtaking” and made her happy to look at them.

That was wonderful to hear, of course, but I was curious about which photo she’d chosen to write about. A placid landscape? A blossoming flower?

But when she sent me her essay, I was astonished to see that she’d chosen to write about an abstract – one that some people find disturbing or spooky, and others dismiss as meaningless computer-generated garbage.  It was a piece selected for an exhibit last year called “Body and Soul.”

“Essence of Shell: Eyes” is one in a series that I worked on shortly after leaving Afghanistan. My husband and I were recuperating at the beach, and I spent hours photographing the intimate interiors of seashells, then playing with their form and color to pull out the themes I saw in them.

I was wounded, exhausted, and unsure of whether the two years of difficult work had really accomplished what we’d set out to do. I had left Kabul reluctantly, longing to stay with my colleagues and keep up the good fight. These things were in my soul when I made this piece, but I did not consciously set out to tell that story.

Katherine, though, divined the story behind the image without ever having heard it from me. Here is her version.

Of course he had read all those stories of fantasies and wild, conjured dreams from the darkness of the mind, those musings and wonderings and rantings of the philosophical among us.

Of course he had known cheerfully, tramping through foliage and getting soaked and getting bitten by bugs and eating moldy ration bars and running from monsters-but you know, when you were on a Quest like this, it was the end that mattered.

Not the journey.

Right?

…

Right…?

His heart almost seemed to shatter as he remembered tearfully those days when all he had to fear was getting eaten by a Soul Breaker. That was simple.

This was not.

The dark edges of his brain whispered conspiratorially, time will go quickly and don’t you worry, because soon you will be buried without a name or a cross to guard your rotting flesh, like those warriors you see on the side of the road.

Swirls of frenzy stirred him up; was that his fate? He had come to the end of the journey, he was about to win against the monsters…every thought linked to another, and eventually he had come to conclusion that soon, very soon he would leave on another Quest.

But to where?

And without his beloved companions, who now were dearer than life to him now? It seemed incomprehensible, those souls who were so close.

It hurt.

And he was not going to deny it.

Those halcyon times seemed so far away. Romping and laughing and complaining…would that all come to an end? He saw now, that he had been foolish. The pink swirls of joy had all too soon slipped into black curls of venom and bleakness.

It wasn’t the ending that counted, was it?

It was the journey.

Anderbo.com does Afghanistan

I can’t seem to leave Afghanistan… I keep working with those photos, from 2002-05, because the depth of meaning they have for me seems to elude the actual image.

Anyhow, six of them are published today as a photo memoir, “Afghanistan Blues,” in Anderbo.com, a New York online journal whose editor, Rick Rofihe, is an impressively energetic guy. Just talking to him on the phone for a few minutes made me tired. In a good way, of course.

The journal doesn’t do much photography, and also doesn’t do hyperlinks, but otherwise worth a look. Check it out.