A New Photography and Storytelling Project Focused on Humanity

Stories of human tranformation from people who have been through hell and back

Self-portrait: Author

Retirement is overrated, and I am at retirement age. Instead of sitting around, moving my sheckles, and being a quiet, content introvert, I’m facing my fear and getting out of my comfort zone to meet new people.

I am beginning a new photography and storytelling project called Aging with Gratitude. It’s a new project, so there is no website or newsletter yet. But I did manage to hack a new Instagram account, so feel free to join me.

I’ve got nothing to sell.

My project isn’t about money. It’s love of art, humans, and their stories. Especially people who are fifty-five and older.

The older, the better.

For example, even though my project is only a couple of weeks old, I met an eighty-one-year-old woman earlier this week who was born in 1945 in Germany. She barely made it out alive, and her story, her black and white portrait, will be ready to publish shortly.

A stranger became a friend. More to come.

The conversations I value most are not about success

They are about human struggle, suffering, and life-changing stories. Reinvention, regret, grace, recovery, meaning, purpose. The quiet wisdom that only comes from living a long, difficult life, because life is hard for all of us.

My mission is to capture black-and-white portraits alongside the stories behind them. Conversations with people who have lived, suffered, recovered, lost, rebuilt, loved, failed, forgiven, and kept going.

People who carry wisdom in their wrinkles. People who know life is both beautiful and hard—people who have become more fully human.

And people who are willing to sit in front of my camera, which is up on the list of fears with public speaking, unless you’re an influencer.

Aging with gratitude means we’re at a stage in life where we can look back and be thankful for the journey through hell and back. The suffering hurt so much that it profoundly changed us.

The photography side of it

I’ve been practicing photography since 1978, when I learned to make my first prints in a darkroom. Then, life happened, and even though I had a camera my entire life, I didn’t discover the inner artist within me until 2020. Since then, I’ve been learning the business of art, photography, and painting, which is brutal, just like with writing and selling any decent book.

I practice art for love, like most artists. For some of us, money trickles in. But this particular project has nothing to do with money.

Aging with Gratitude includes portraits that could be worth 10,000 words written in the wrinkles.

This portrait is one I captured a couple of years ago. I still think about it. My dear friend Stewart Smith was one of my first mentors, and when I look at this image, I do not see age.

I see one of the kindest human beings I’ve ever known. And yes, he’s still very much with us, living his dream.

Image credit: author.

I see humility

Resilience. Joy bound with hardship. I see someone who has lived enough life to stop pretending. It’s not easy to close to people who are weathered by life’s storms, but when you do, and the eye of the storm reveals itself, we see another world.

That is what this project is about: real people. Honest stories. Hard-earned wisdom. No filters. No pretending. Just humanity.

In black-and-white portraits, using my super-lean mobile studio, considering that my tiny home studio is too small for most of my work.

Introductions, please

If you or someone you know has a story worth telling, I would love to hear from you because I believe some of the most powerful people in the world are not the loudest or the richest.

They are the ones the world may never know until someone asks them to share their stories and how they have suffered, healed, and found grace, then gratitude, anyway.

My artistic desire is to sit across from them with a camera and listen. Just keep in mind that I live in Arizona, and don’t like to travel much.

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