Like Judith Joy Ross, the photographer whose work, among many others, stretches me, influences me profoundly, I have a radical belief in the individual. There is a perfect space between (and within) the potential strength of the collective and the talent, character and thrust of each of us. It seems to me there is an exquisite space between the spectacle of Western individualism and the intelligence of collective humanism and its profound power. The coalescing of the Individual being (and individual presence, voice and affirmation in the world) and ‘I am because of others’. In parallel, I reflect with clarity that we will lose something deep inside of ourselves, if we allow wilderness to be destroyed.
I refer to W Eugene Smith’s quote “…and each time I pressed the shutter release it was a shouted condemnation hurled with the hope that the picture might survive through the years, with the hope that they might echo through the minds of men in the future – causing them caution and remembrance and realization.”
