Welcome to the very first day of Lulu's Big Undertaking: my 365 photo project. As in, I hereby commit to making a photograph for each day of the next year and posting it here. Thanks for joining me!
Been a long time coming; I first heard about 365s from my friend Beth back in, I think, April of this year and I've wanted to start my own project ever since. Ever since I first picked up a camera with serious intent in 1990 photography has been how I approached the world, how I made sense of things. It was what I did but also who I was. Nearly nine years ago, however, I stepped most of the way out of my photography career to be home with first one and then two children, happily living my lifelong wish of full-time motherhood.
At first, with only one baby, I still made pictures as a matter of course, it was so deeply ingrained in me. But the passionate tedium of life with small children grew and gained momentum, and photography slowly receded in the balance of my life. Along the way I discovered that the energy and creativity necessary for being a present and engaged mother drew from the same well as the energy and creativity I relied upon for making pictures.
More about all this later. I spent a long time wanting to make pictures, but not making them pretty much at all ever. Beth's description of her 365 photo year sparked a longing in me to begin again, and I genuinely meant to. But then I got tangled up in all kinds of process-oriented issues: which camera to use. How to present the pictures. Whether to write along with the images or just put them up to speak for themselves. So for some months the 365 was something I chased around in my head without actually getting around to actually doing.
And then this past Sunday, as I was packing the boys and me literally out the door for a few days at my mom's house, I spotted this spent paper airplane on the floor. It caught my eye, even though it's not at all the sort of situation that used to ring my visual bells. Something in me heaved to life, turned over, insisted: I made the picture -- on my ever-present iPhone. And so it begins. Away we go.
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