Quito from the bus window, photo by Elie Gardner.

I almost fell out of my chair when I read the following words. The unconcealed message is extraordinarily inspiring:

“As a journalist, I’m a post processor. I don’t cry while I photograph funerals. I don’t clap when I hear a message I like. I react days, weeks later. It’s a professional necessity that has become a personal defense mechanism. Ecuador broke it down. The páramo’s spirit caught me off guard. On horseback, I closed my eyes only when the wind blew up the dust so bad it hurt my eyes. With my eyes closed, the sound of the horses’ hooves and the whipping of the wind kept the scenery alive in my mind. In Galápagos I jumped into the Pacific and within minutes a sea turtle swam to my left, a sea lion to my right. I could be no where but that moment. It’s all right now.”

Then I actually fell out of my chair when I picked up this meditative link on NY Times via Shannon O’Brien.

“But primarily, fundamentally, to live is to embrace each moment as if it were the first, last, and all moments of time. Whether you like this moment or not is not the point: in fact liking it or not liking it, being willing or unwilling to accept it, depending on whether or not you like it, is to sit on the fence of your life, waiting to decide whether or not to live, and so never actually living. I find it impressive how thoroughly normal it is be so tentative about the time of our lives, or so asleep within it, that we miss it entirely. Most of us don’t know what it actually feels like to be alive. We know about our problems, our desires, our goals and accomplishments, but we don’t know much about our lives.”

Elie Gardner, a good friend of mine and fellow photographer, continues to post photographs from her journey through Africa on her blog. If you follow the progression, notice how the photographs read like a written journal. They carry the viewer through varying first-person perspectives featuring a blend of polished photographs and narrative self-portraits.  Moreover, the smart decision to write a journal elevates the sophistication of the collection. Time is well spent following her posts.

“Entering Engaruka I pay an entrance fee of 5000 shillings (about $4). It’s mzungu (White) price, for which I receive a receipt. Some leave the bus. Others board. We ride to the last stop. I sit inside the pages of National Geographic magazine. Covered Muslims, Maasai warriors and other indigenous faces with dark eyes stare at me. Huts with thatched roofs and mud and stick walls blanket the landscape. I remind myself to inhale and exhale. I don’t think I’ve ever been this far from home.

“Their necks are disguised with large loops of white beads, like halos that have fallen from above their heads. They sing, call and response. They bob, bounce and laugh. The earrings hanging from their sagging lobes and cartilage swing and catch the light of the midday sun. Their necklaces bounce up and down, up and down.

Down. The halo has been dropped over my head, and I’m holding two hands. I’m in the middle and try to mimic their routine. I think first of my body movement, then I focus on trying to make my necklace flap like theirs. I lose myself in the movements. After a few songs, they guide me to the shade of a nearby tree. I sit on the middle of a cowhide. Two Maasai woman wiggle onto the hide with me, sandwiching me. Thigh to thigh to thigh. They drape a kanga over my legs and pour beads onto my lap.”

See more at her blog OTCSpeakeasy

Walking in St. Louis, Photograph by Elie Gardner, copyright Elie Gardner and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch

We’re in the middle of a winter storm, and Post-Dispatch photographer Elie Gardner grabbed a few pre-storm frames from Sunday’s light dusting. This particular gem is a nice blend of her graphic personal work (click on singles, then head to photograph #5 and #17) and some of her more moment-driven assignment work. Enjoy.