In Celebration of the 101th Anniversary of International Women's Day I am reposting this 2011 image and the story about its creation process that I made last year for the 100th Anniversary.
"Interested in the story behind the photo?
I continue to follow my passion, which is still
photography. Yes, I can go into visual overload sometimes but at the
end of the day, I am still a passionate portrait photographer whose deep
roots originate in the classic style of film photographers. I love,
love to create portraits of flowers, trees, people, light, shadows and
it’s perfect if I can combine them all into one image. And occasionally
an event or a situation compels me to create a new image that will be
added to my series, “In a Friend, In A Flower” which displays a floral
arrangement as metaphorical representation of a person or a significant
event that is important to me.
The floral arrangement above is an Homage To My Grandmother and all
the grandmothers that were alive in 1911 on the occasion of the 1st
anniversary of International Women’s Day, and I had no choice about
making or not making this portrait.
As Kody Bateman, CEO of Send Out Cards calls it,
I “experienced a prompting – the strong need to act” and I could not walk away from it until
I created this portrait.
Honestly, my mind/body/spirit strongly prompted me to put this floral
arrangement together in my almost 100 year old vase formerly owned by
my grandmother. Mind you, I’ve never taken this vase out of the curio
cabinet since the day it arrived. But after receiving two floral gifts
for this centennial occasion, one from my husband and another from a
business colleague, I truly felt I had very little free will to do
anything other than combine the two flower arrangements, place them in
this antique vase and photograph them. Thanks to two consecutive sunny
days with the window light calling to me at two different times, from
two different rooms, again, I just had to create two different
photographs.
And my personal epiphany during this creative process is the discovery of my own personal formula:
PASSION + PROMPTING = PORTRAIT
This formula feels true for several of my photographic sojourns, from
client portraits to flowers to very recent self-portraits. Do you have a
similar formula for your work? If you’re comfortable posting it here, I
would love for you to share it.
I’m grateful that I followed my passion and the strong prompting
that compelled me to focus a lot of my time and attention on composing
my grandmother’s 100 year old vase in a portrait. And it’s interesting
that now for me, the picture is more about the woman’s face on the vase
and how it makes me think of my grandmother and in a bigger context, all
the grandmothers that were alive in 1911. I wonder how many of them
were able to follow their passions in 1911? I sincerely hope many of
them in their day and many of us in our day now. "
