Just days after the closing ceremonies of the Barcelona Foto Biennale I received the news that I have been awarded in the 12th Julia Margaret Cameron Award for Women Photographers, my second year in a row, in the categories of: Women Seen By Women, Portrait, Self Portrait, and Nature. With this award comes the invitation to exhibit in the 6th Biennial of Fine Art & Documentary Photography which will take place in 2019. It feels really good to be recognized twice over in an international award, and to know that my recent work is getting noticed, too. All of the photos that were awarded in the 11th Julia Margaret Cameron Award were taken at a time of extreme emotional trauma and prolonged stress… a time when photography and poetry became the path by which I found my way, every day. It’s just a fact that artists produce some of their best work during their darkest hours and I know I am not alone in my worry of wondering if not every last ounce of my creativity was squeezed out of me when the universe had me by my lady balls and was squeezing, mightily.
But what some people might not know about me is that I inherited my shutterbugs entirely from my father. Captivated since childhood by his beautiful black and white portraits taken with the same Olympus OM-1 I use now, I can thank him for an early introduction to fine art photography and an in-born skill that isn’t going to evaporate off of me in the sunshine but rather simmer and become thicker and richer and sweeter over time.
So it was with some tears that I saw my Portrait of My Father at Mount Shivano and Tabeguache in the lineup of photos awarded in the portraits category of this year's Julia Margaret Cameron Award. I took this photo, a candid portrait, just this summer of 2018 and I knew when I snapped it that I had truly captured my father in this moment; his humble love of nature and quiet contemplation of a wonderful world.
