Luz

Outtake/ Outtake

What do we do with all of those random moments that don't mean anything to anyone but us?

The view from here

I Heart Columbia

I never thought that I'd say it, but it's true- I'm missing Columbia, Missouri like crazy! Feeling nostalgic for the good old days, I've been going through some work from the last year and came across this one from my First Ward "In Our Neighborhood" project that I did for David Rees's Picture Story class. (PS- Amanda Lucier did a retone of this image and she made it really pop. Thanks, Amanda!)

14-year-old MaKayla reaches for her baby cousin Justice while her godmother Taz works on her hair.

The Joy of Family

This time of year always feels quiet and simple in its way, and my favorite thing to do at New Year's is to be somewhere in nature.
Fernando's brother and family came to visit us for a few days and we were blessed with a beautiful sunny day at the beach in San Sebastian- a happy relief from what has been a very drizzly winter here.

Blind

These last few weeks since arriving in Spain I haven't had time to take pictures, or even edit my work from my project. I'm really missing being totally absorbed in photography! For now I'll have to post some of the images that stand out in my mind. Here's one that I took just a day before leaving Nepal that I feel captures something about the extreme circumstances of poverty in many peoples' lives there...

A blind woman on the road near Pashupatinath Temple in Kathmandu. With social welfare assistance nearly nonexistent in Nepal, disabled persons are often left with little or no choice but to beg in order to survive.

Regard this life...

A New Dawn

It seems too good to be true! This is my first "shot" in Spain, taken from our bedroom window at our new house, when I woke up the morning after I arrived last Thursday. Only a 10 minute car ride away from Pamplona, we're living in the middle of a valley where the only thing you see is farm land. After being in polluted Kathmandu for the last 3 months, where even a short walk to the grocery store involved the risk of getting run down by murderous traffic, I feel like I'm in heaven....

Namaste Nepal

My time in Kathmandu is coming to a close, and I'll be heading to Spain tomorrow to start a new adventure. I've spent the last few weeks photographing like crazy, and the editing will take me forever (plus I've run out of memory on my computer, and need to spend hours "backing up" before I can do anything else.) Here's a sample of the most recent work from the last few days in and around Shanti Sewa Griha.

Asha again....

Of all of the people that I met and photographed at Shanti Sewa Griha, 10 year old Asha touched me the most. Deaf and blind, she is also likely retarded from the neglect and malnutrition that she suffered before she was left on Shanti's doorstep 4 years ago. Like so many of Nepal's severely disabled children, her diagnosis has not been clearly determined. She remains isolated, even while the community of Shanti includes her to the best of its potential. With little resources to provide the kind of full-time care that she needs, she is often left alone.

Killing Dinner

Shanti's cook, Gyan Bahadur, prepared 20 chickens for a feast on the last night of Dashain. The prohibitive cost of meat leaves many of Nepal's poor to subsist on a vegetarian diet, and meat is only eaten on special occasions.

Shanti Dancers

Students at Shanti Sewa Griha's eco village gave a performance of traditional Nepali dances to kick off the Dashain holiday. I took this one while the girls were waiting for their call to go on stage.

Mijar Family

Makhmali Mijar and four of her five children came to live at Shanti Sewa Griha about 5 years ago. The kids- Santos,16; Sangita, 14; Sanju, 10; and Surez, 5 all have Xeroderma, a genetic skin disorder that causes freckling and puts them at a high risk for developing skin cancer.
The Mijars are one of the families that I plan to focus on more intensely for this project, as they are dealing so much with the compounded issues of poverty that effect so many families in Nepal.
This was my first day photographing them- there was a lot of chaos, people coming in and out of the room... a typical day at Shanti. These are 2 of the portraits that I liked.

Surez

It's hard to calm this boy down, and his demand to be photographed is pretty high!

I don't think that this quite works... but am posting it anyway just to get a feel for the process of photographing.... I'm definitely meeting my challenges in terms of finding that everyone thinks that they should pose for the camera. This is exacerbated even more by the immediacy of digital (as all of the kids especially want to see the back of the camera as soon as the shutter's clicked.)
Wanting to be a little more invisible and just present for everyday life... I think it's a hard thing to communicate, even when you speak the same language, but in this case I don't have words to express what I'm trying to do...

Sanju

Sangita and Asmita

Sangita Mijar, 14, and Asmita Thapa, 17, are like teenagers anywhere- they are concerned with having friends, being fashionable, and keeping connected by cell phone to an expanding world that they hope will accept and include them.

Both girls are dealing with the realities of having disabilities that impact their lives. Sangita, like her siblings, has xeroderma, an autosomal recessive genetic disorder of DNA repair in which the ability to repair damage caused by ultraviolet light is deficient. The skin is severely freckled, and the vulnerability to skin cancer is dangerously heightened.
Asmita has trouble walking (I'm not sure if it's musculur dystrophy or something else.) She lives at Shanti and works in their workshop sewing.

Asha in her own world

I keep finding myself drawn to Asha.. trying to imagine what it must be like to be both deaf and blind- aware of energies and sensations, but with a very different experience of reality than the one most of us share.

Family Visit

It is holiday season here in Nepal- complete with the requisite visits from family. Bimala Devi's granddaughters came by to bring her gifts and braid her hair. It was nice to see her getting some well deserved love and attention.

Affordable Health Care

Serving one of the poorest communities in Kathmandu, the pharmacy at Shanti Sewa Griha makes sure that everyone can get the medicine that they need. For 50 rupis (less than a U.S. dollar) patients get a ticket that they can exchange for their prescription from Shanti's free clinic. While this may sound like the work of a socialist utopia, it is no thanks to the Nepali government- a German NGO donates the medicines.

Ajit