Touch of Light

 It is one thing to photograph people. It is another to make others care about them by revealing the core of their humanness. - Paul Strand

When I go to events in Oaxaca, Mexico, I go camera in hand, ready for surprise and hoping to get some pictures that are more than superficial. Over the years during many travels at home and abroad, the camera has become an extension of myself, a kind of third eye. What interests me most is humanity. After that, it is landscapes. 

The last two weeks in Oaxaca have been special for Oaxacans. This week has been Semana Santa, Holy Week, culminating in  Easter Sunday. Catholicism is by far the most practiced religion in Mexico. The celebrations bring people together in great reverence, worship and unity. 

Enjoy these images I took during the last two weekends.

To photo people, I have to be brave enough to enter their space. Yet, my heart goes before me and I go in peace. If I am in the “zone,” I am nothing . . . a gentle breeze or touch of light—for I am one with the person I see.

Between The Eyes

While preparing to show photographs at an exhibition, I have come across pictures I took in Kashmir. They are among the finest in my collection. Something marvelous must have been occurring that day while I visited the remote highlands of northern India near the Himalaya Mountains. I was in a village that held a loosely clustered group of maybe a dozen families. The autumn weather was getting colder each day, and from what I learned, the people were planning to leave and go to lower elevations before long.

I had set up an easel in a communal gathering place in the midst of wooden homes and started an oil painting. Folks came around to watch, while a wood fire blazed. Especially the children were entertained. Several times, I stopped to take pictures of them as they watched me. Although I was not using a tripod or posing my subjects, a remarkable clarity and beauty came through the lens and as the shutter clicked, all the elements were in my favor. The pictures came out superbly.

I never tire of looking at the faces. They are bright with natural goodness and show a rugged lifestyle close to the earth. The confused, glazed look of modern life is absent, and instead, candor and curiosity are apparent.

On closer inspection, I see that between the eyes, on the brow of some of the young people, a slight furrow exists. They seem intense in looking at me. What is this concentration that gives depth of expression to their face? It is a forthrightness that lets me know that I am being watched as much as I am watching.