Dry, dead leaves are called litter.
When I first discovered this, I felt the sweet sensation of a definition akin to that of a litter of puppies or kittens. Sweet and soft and new. And then a cloud quickly formed over my brow upon the realization that litter also meant trash and that’s sorta how life goes sometimes, isn’t it? We make of it what we decide — what we define to be litter or define to be litter.
What you cannot feel you cannot take care of. Newsprint and ficus lyrata litter. 2020.
I wept with the milkweeds
for I had no time to stay and nowhere to go.
#musings
Ballet Des Moines Executive Director Blaire Massa (right), Artistic Director Serkan Usta (center) and Winefest Des Moines Executive Director Natasha Sayles (left).
So this is where we are now. In the doorway and on the floor, holding court virtually and holding technology literally in order to give company dancers a portal to an audience.
While it is within my job description to create images for the ballet, I’m not sure I’ve taken a more accidentally powerful one. There are no stages. No bright lights. No lush velvet curtain with company logos surging by spotlight onto it before the opening act of a Triple Bill. Instead, there are lines delivered like “Can you hear me now?” and “I’m sorry, can everyone go ahead and mute themselves?” and the occasional “We’re having technical difficulties so we’re going to switch from our laptop to the iPad so stay with us!”
Ballet Des Moines had their first “performance” during this month’s collaboration with Winefest. Ticket holders purchased a three course dinner, which came with two bottles of wine, dessert and a Zoom link sent 24 hours before the show. Ten ticket holders were able to sit in studio, up in the costume loft, so far above the dancers they met the six foot minimum to socially distance in a state that still doesn’t require masks to ensure the safety of each other, our children, parents and grandparents, let alone our six company dancers desperately trying to stay healthy in a global pandemic, but this is not meant to be a political post. (But for the record, it sure would have been nice to see my grandfather one last time before he had to be quarantined in a hospital due to covid and would die there, alone, due to covid complications. Wear the damn mask.)
I digress.
The performance, which was actually meant to be a peek behind-the-scenes at a work in progress and regularly scheduled evening rehearsal, went exactly as it should. Dancers were dewey from the warm air and adrenaline of having a 10 person real life audience and 30 person virtual audience. They were graceful and strong and all of the things that first captured me about the art of ballet. And for a moment, I wasn’t sad about the the loss of a stage, because the dancers were dancing again and able to share it with others. That feeling of awe watching them fly through the air? Still there. That energetic inertia that makes you physically sway in the same direction the dancers are moving? Still happened. And on the faces of the Executive Director, Artistic Director and Creative Director (behind the camera lens) were wide eyes and smiles that can only be produced by pure authentic joy.
Stage or no stage, we showed up in masks, allowing our belief in the power of the arts to be undiminished. The frustration and angst over how things have unfolded this year was suspended. And in a time when almost nothing feels right, this night and this moment, these dancers and this audience, felt exactly right.
So this is where we are now. Loving the arts from doorways and computer screens, foregoing velvety curtains for semi-reliable internet and virtual connections. But we have our health, a company of professional dancers and a studio to rehearse in and share from. And we’ve got each other.
Until it is safe for the stage to welcome us all home, please support the arts.
In an era of covid, meeting anyone new has sort of felt like a stale mate. New faces have certainly been introduced through a screen whereas the introductory phrase is no longer “Hello, it’s nice to meet you” but rather “Is this thing working? Can you hear me okay?”
That made this shoot extra special. This virtual senior came to life safely in my studio and in front of my camera and I still can feel that energy nearly one month later. Joe is everything I wish I could have been as a senior and everything I hope my son is when he becomes one: full of life, full of light, full of hope, confidence and creativity — and authentically, genuinely kind and wonderful. To that I say: yes, yes.
Just a few snapshots of our time collaborating together.
Masks and portraits created by yours truly. Want to support the arts and the artists struggling to keep them alive? Wear a mask. And consider a donation to Ballet Des Moines.
On the eve of her 50th birthday, Soko reached out to me about creating imagery that captured her at this stage in life — all of the wisdom, beauty and experiences wrapped into this incredible being who sat before me, a stranger prior to a zoom, prior to my studio.
I was honored to share my studio space with Soko, grateful she trusted me to see her through my lens, thankful for her vulnerability and certainty. Hours and dozens of images later, I left my studio a stronger woman than when I entered that day. I left feeling a little more sure of womanhood and lot more sure of the strength of my creativity.
I see you Soko. Thank you for believing in me… as much as I believe in you.
Lessons moved to a computer and recitals were cancelled this spring. But as any parent or caregiver can attest, the energy and spirit of our children cannot be contained, quarantine or not. Nor should it.
I was honored to shoot our friend Ayla this summer, who danced along side sweet Margaux this past fall. And while creating staged images in first and fifth positions is perhaps important, shooting the art of ballet in all of it’s blurred excitement are those images I fall in love with.
(In Napoli where love is king
When boy meets girl here's what they say)
When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie
That's amore.
Seven years ago I boarded a plane to Las Vegas to capture a 7:00 ceremony at the top of the city. What was supposed to be a planned hometown ceremony turned into a secret jet-away to the desert. It was fair to say that I didn’t know what I was doing, other than fully committing to being present for a couple I had just kinda met. I borrowed a discarded camera of my mother’s and packed my bags, not trusting my knowledge of shutter speed as much as the faith in my ability to simply see the love before me and know when to shoot.
Seven years later, this will continue to be my favorite image. Although we took photos getting ready and getting antsy and actually getting married, this gritty photo digging into pizza post nuptials will forever hold a special place in my heart. It’s the real life stuff of sitting by each other’s side, knowing that when everything else feels too staged or too much, there’s maybe nothing better than stopping, slowing down and feeding each other’s soul.
Thank you for taking me with you, Mary and Dave. Thank you for believing in me to stand by your side and shoot such an incredible moment of your life. Here’s to the next seven years, the next seventy years and the moon always hitting your eye like a big pizza pie. That’s amore.
I searched debatably long and hard to find a poem to accompany this image so that I did not have to write words to it myself. Surely someone before me with a mightier pen has felt the twist of conflicting emotions, of feeling so fully so many feelings at once.
I stumbled upon this flower at the edge of the sunflower field, its progression without question — through water and light and proper pH in the soil, its unfurling inevitable. I smiled in knowing that perhaps all we need to proceed is to just grow toward the light. Sometimes even without the light or the water or the proper pH we’ll just keep growing because it’s inevitable that life moves forward. That made me feel full of a promise I didn’t have to keep with a pinky but one that was established without ever subscribing to the idea that everything moves toward its destination without question.
But as I stood there, staring, bringing my camera back down to my hip, I didn’t want to feel good. I didn’t want to grow unknowingly or unfurl my own precarious petals just because that’s what’s supposed to happen next.
I didn’t want to be reassured by sunlight or solid ground. I simply wanted to stand, fully present, acknowledging this beautiful darkness without wishing anything away, without projecting a storyline or prescribing the idea that fulfillment only comes when what’s before me is bright and upright and done.
Perhaps there’s no poetry after all. Perhaps the perceived grip of these leaves holding itself tightly until it’s the right time are the words I needed to feel it was okay to feel that way. Preserving this flower, this Helianthus annuus, this common sunflower in such an uncommon way, knowing that at least by this image, it will never need to be anything than what it is in this moment, in that moment, is enough.
You are enough. Just as you are.
Thankful that love always has a chance to move forward, even during a pandemic.
Nothing against JCPenney, but family portrait sessions have come a long way.* Perhaps it’s the parents that realize “we never look like this and that wallpaper looks nothing like an Autumn day.” Perhaps it’s the moms and dads that realize they want the pictures that are passed down to be looked at with a sense of awe and less so awwww hell no.
I am always appreciative for those that give me a little bit of room to create, while capturing their family exactly as they are. Wild animals and all.
Shout out to the Nelson family for taking a walk on the wild side with me.
*
yours truly, the matriarch in the pink tie.
Honored to help capture this rooftop act of love and light on the 51st anniversary of the Stonewall Riots. See more here.
Courtney Reyes, Executive Director of One Iowa
“I know why the caged bird sings and what continues to hurt is that there was ever even a cage to begin with.”
The first time I heard Maya Angelou speak, she walked onto the stage, all six feet of her, and gently began singing. Her voice, octaves lower than mine and slightly shaking with age yet unwavering in her presence, slowly began singing This Little Light of Mine and I’ll never forget the rush of emotion. I wanted to race to her, to hug her and hold her and apologize for generations of heartache and cruelty, even though she was fifty years my elder. The shame and anger I felt on behalf of my pale skin for a lineage that didn’t take care of her when she was that baby bird. As I continue to find my voice through my craft, this one’s for Maya.
“My craft became my activism.” - Gilbert Baker, creator of the Rainbow Flag in 1978.
I started research on the pride flag and was enamored with the history. The story of a young man from Parsons, Kansas, who’d go on to meet Harvey Milk, weaving in nods to Judy Garland and Allen Ginsburg. The original flag, consisted of eight colors, representing sex, life, healing, sunlight, nature, magic/art, serenity and spirit. Yes. Please.
I am honored to be an ally to the LGBTQ community. In fact, honored doesn’t even hold the right weight. I feel incredibly lucky, grateful and proud to wave the pride flag, acknowledging the iconic weight of raising these colors and this community. And as an ode to Baker, I’ll keep finding ways to use my craft(s) as my activism.
This limited edition print is available for purchase here.
All I have left of you now are the memories of you and a handful of Starlight mints you gave to me in December of 2018. I knew it might be the last moment we shared and I’ve stored them in a ziploc bag in a drawer next to my bed ever since you placed them in my hand — straight from your pocket, some without their packaging.
Starlight, although obviously a candy brand, means “the light that comes from the stars.” I’d like to believe you’re that light now.
When I finally got the call, I threw my children in the car and drove the twelve hours required to feel as if being there would make a difference. Coincidentally, I chose as my trip soundtrack, to listen to the translation of The Book of Eels, by Swedish journalist Patrik Svensson. He spoke about mystery and wonder and history and home and life and love and then death. All of the things you have come to represent.
Listening to the audio version doesn’t allow for underlining all of the great lines in pencil (nor does being behind the wheel, had I the hard copy). I can’t remember the line verbatim, but I believe Svensson said something near-cliche like “if you don’t know where you came from, you won’t know where you’re going.” I chewed on this for a few hundred miles, realizing that it only applies to those who eventually go back home, like Svensson’s European eel, anguilla anguilla. For the European eel is born in the Sargasso Sea and will eventually return there, after hundreds if not thousands of miles of swimming away, before it determines it’s time to go home.
If you were too young and left too early and don’t go back home as an adult, or don’t go back often, do you need to know where you came from? Does knowing your Swedish roots, or any of your familial roots help you get to where you’re supposed to go, even if that direction doesn’t point back home? Is it supposed to point back home? Home starts to become elusive, particularly after a death in the family and another 10 hours left of interstate heading east.
We looked through the two large tubs full of photos, cracked frames and negatives, just like when Grandma died six years ago. There was a sense of nostalgia then — so many photos I had never seen before. It provided a sense of relief. A reminder that her 80 years spent raising nine children were full and full of joy. I was relieved when I saw the tubs brought back up from the basement, knowing I’d find memories in there to fill in the cracks of my forty years with you and your nearly 89.
But this time, there was no relief. There weren’t new photos of you. There were only the ones I saw six years ago that had remained in the bucket. The same photos from your 50th wedding anniversary, the same photos from the time I visited with Finn in the Summer of 2011, the same photos of you in attendance at my siblings’ sporting or arts events as they lived on the opposite side of you on a large country block. There were no new memories because I had made so few new ones.
I knew where I came from, but I hadn’t come home.
It’s been hard to sit down and write because there’s nothing new to say. I shared them all when I first realized there would be no new ones and I fumbled to feel right about it ever since. I want to believe that I didn’t let you down by not coming home enough, but I think at this point, the harsher realization is that I let myself down.
I don’t know if being there would have meant we painted any more or you wrote any more and let me read the chapters before you’d finish them. I don’t know that we would have watched bad Westerns or went on walks back to the garden. Or if, as an adult, I would have spent the night on the floor in a sleeping bag. I don’t know… and perhaps that’s the hardest part.
Above: you on the far right in both images
I learned at your funeral that your brother would take bets on you winning fights on the street corner in order for the two of you to get money for the movies.
I learned that you had a football and baseball scholarship to Bowling Green but after an argument with your father, you chose to enter the U.S. Navy instead.
I learned that before your first born daughter had heart surgery in order to live past the age of seven, you bought her a Barbie and took her to the finest restaurant in town for Swedish pancakes.
I learned about family vacations, with you and grandma and your eight kids plus one on the way, with one car and a tent with no poles.
I learned you nailed four bats in one night with a badminton racket so your four daughters weren’t afraid to go to sleep in the dark.
I learned that building sheds and garages and even homes was a family affair (and I’d try my best to recreate that the day after your funeral with my dad and stepmom, brothers, sister and my son when pouring a concrete pad).
I learned you had an older brother who saw a picture of Jesus hanging in his room and told your mother that some day he’d meet him. One morning he didn’t wake up and you believed that was the day he went to meet him.
I learned that you got baptized in 2010 and you pitched in the church softball league until you were 82.
I learned, although I already knew it, that you were loved (and maybe a little feared) by many. That you lived a life that was fuller than most and that you valued your family more than anything else.
There will be no more memories between the two of us. At least not on earth. But to be cliche about it, I promise to always remember where I came from and to look for your light in the stars.
Thank you for this image, Keegan. I will cherish it always.
Dale Norbert Sonney, July 17, 1931 - June 10, 2020. It should be noted, that although age and dementia contributed to his death, so did complications from the coronavirus. Wear a god damn mask, people. And vote them out.
Sunday, May 24
A Milne Family Celebration Service
In memoriam
Dear Baby Bird,
We need you to know that your short life was born onto the rafters of a home built from the foundation with love, kindness, support and generosity.
Although death can be a time of darkness, you were born into a family that always looks to the bright side.
You were born into a loving home. A home that celebrates creativity. A home that relishes in what we need, but never embellishes in more than what is deemed enough.
Your life existed on a porch that also inhabited friendship, records of crooning icons, pillars of illuminated holiday lights and a welcoming surface for weary souls.
The home you leave is a loving home. A home where we value each others ideas and are supportive of any and all brave enough to share them. We’re non-judgmental of each other, regardless of age or wisdom for even the fresh ideas of the inexperienced are to be valued.
You were born into a family of producers, making and creating with courage and wild abandon.
You, like perhaps us someday, left the world a better place than when you arrived.
You leave a home that was as supportive of your growth and flight as we are of each other — stronger together but understanding of the importance of the individual, acknowledging the importance of our own thoughts, space and time.
Lastly, we know our spirits will outlast our bodies just as we celebrate the spirits of those no longer with us: Ruth, Betty and Dot, Yayoi and Frida, Rosa and Amelia, artists and inventors and activists we celebrate, regardless of their earthly bodies.
Thank you for choosing our home to inhabit. Thank you for investing in our rafter to take flight. Thank you for taking your last breath beside the New York Times on our porch steps meant for friendships, records and weary souls.
We honor your never ending flight, dear baby bird.
What is this sadness? What is this deep feeling inside our bones when we wake, when we walk, when we work and when we wither away into a bath of salty tears after a long day of nothingness?
What is this heaviness that applies itself like a solid necklace constructed by generations of lives and longing before us, choking us in the safety of our own quarantine?
What is this emotional spectrum of good to bad and back again when we still go to sleep warm and loved?
What is this feeling? What is this desperate loneliness, when we have everything we need?
What is this moment of pause and despair that reminds us of the fragility of our spirit? This fragment in time when the guilt of having enough but not doing enough and enough is enough is all intertwined, woven together into a weighted cloak of uncertainty we wear day in and day out.
What is this feeling? What is this desperate loneliness, when we have everything we need?
What is it we need? What is it we feel?
It feels heavy.
The truth is, we don’t know how to feel. We don’t know what this is or how long it’s here to stay. This weight. This sadness. This frustration and anger and hurt and hot tears. But it’s here. It’s within us. It hurts.
Throughout my years as an image making artist, I have been in this place before. Never a place of pandemic, but a place that felt so dark I wasn’t sure how to even look for the light. A place that felt sullen and alone and eventually I started to document it. Shot by shot, I would hear a click and that small sound was the emotional inertia I took comfort in. That push of a button was one step closer to letting it go. It didn’t eliminate the situation and neither does this. But it does something. And sometimes, we just need to do something that allows us to think “this will help.”
The Creative Confessional has always served an audience that was willing to engage in something a little more authentic. A little more real and earnest and raw. A little more emotional. By acknowledging the mess of it all, be it hurt or sadness or sometimes even anger, we can perhaps begin to let a little bit of it go.
If you’d like to schedule a personal session, contact me here.
Courtney and I have long been able to connect emotionally, as our lives intertwine and intersect in the most beautiful ways. Her ability to feel, unabashedly, is what makes her a beautiful human, a loving mother, a devoted wife and a pillar of her community. I am forever grateful she asked me to create with her and for knowing that by capturing this heaviness, she lets others know it’s okay to feel it, too.
A heartfelt thank you to KIN for the beautiful borrowed necklace for this shoot.
“Photography is inescapably a memorial art. It selects, out of the flow of time, a moment to be preserved, with the moments before and after falling away like sheer cliffs.” - Teju Cole, Memories of Things Unseen.
Mother’s Day. Sunday, May 10, 2015 taken hours before we’d head to the hospital.
Mother’s Day. Sunday, May 10, 2020, five years later.
You waited twenty four hours to arrive and I know now it was because that wasn’t supposed to be the plan. (We were told three weeks prior to your due date that we’d be checking into the hospital to have you in three days, out of concern for your safety.)
You emotionally postponed opening presents today for over an hour because you said it had been such a long time since you had a birthday, that you couldn’t remember what the order of events was supposed to be.*
You are a meticulous engineer (at times, a bit overboard) like your father.
You cried when Finn cut fresh tulips from the front yard and brought them to you in a vase. You were heartbroken that we killed the flowers. You tried to put them back into the earth, offering them a second chance at life.
You are empathetic (and hopeless) like your mother.
You chose to eat cake before presents followed by birthday nachos for dinner, wearing nothing but your underwear except for a mermaid tail at dinner. (You dressed each one of us during pre-party activities, including a dress and fur shawl for me, a black suit for dad and a button-up for Finn and yet you remained in undies.)
You are ridiculous (in all the best ways) like your brother.
And yet, Margaux Willa Milne, you are ferociously you. You are our Margaux, Margaux Willa, Willa Bean, MWM and X. You are our everything.
Happy fifth birthday, sweet girl.
*To be fair, nothing about this birthday was ordinary. We’re going into the third month of a god damn quarantine due to a global pandemic. The whole day seemed foreign because there could be no friends or gathering or grandparents or cousins over because of covid-19. Thanks, Obama.**
**To ensure a lack of confusion at a later date, there should be clarity given to ensure you know that we’re not, in fact, sarcastically thanking President Obama for ruining your fifth birthday. Trump ruined it.
Intertwined 8x10
Created for World Collage Day 2020.
Someone asked me recently if I had a favorite shoot. My mind scrolled quickly through a half dozen years of ballerinas, underwater sessions and weddings, studio shots and polaroids in Paris. And then I remembered. My most meaningful moment behind a camera — the birth of my niece and nephew.
Rowan Amias and Maia Abigail were born exactly one year ago today. Everything about this image capturing the birth of Rowan still causes me to pause, filled with so much emotion at the miracle of life — the early evening light coming in from the only hospital window, shining upon him as he was held up by the women that ensured his safe arrival.
Maia would be born one hour later. After their 20 week ultrasound, my brother and sister-in-law learned of Maia’s kidney condition that meant she would be stillborn or live very briefly. Maia was born beautiful and perfect in all of our eyes. And we’ll always remember her that way.
“Joy and woe are woven fine / a clothing for the soul divine.” - William Blake, by way of my beautiful sister-in-law.
Today I’m wishing Rowan the happiest first birthday, looking up at the most beautiful blue sky with Maia in my heart and feeling extra grateful for my family near and far.
