The Landscape of Our Skin

This fall I was honored to receive the New Directions Career Center’s 2019 Outstanding Volunteer Award. For the past couple years I’ve volunteered at NDCC in downtown Columbus to photograph their program attendees, giving each graduate a headshot they can use in social media posts & LinkedIn profiles.

Originally founded in 1980 as a program for displaced homemakers, New Directions evolved to provide career counseling and related services to women entering or reentering the workplace. NDCC’s mission goes much deeper than its program offerings to help each woman realize her true potential and self-worth.

Every woman who walks through NDCC’s doors has a different background and story to tell, but strength and courage connect them all. Deciding to make a huge change in your life, to step into the unknown and take a chance on something you’re not sure of— that’s no small thing.

At the awards dinner I gave a short speech about what photographing there makes me think about, and I wanted to share that here.

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THE LANDSCAPE OF OUR SKIN
for the 2019 NDCC Volunteer Appreciation Night

Why are we so hard on ourselves?  When I was a teenager I worried about my big nose, my pimples, my very tiny boobs.  Now that I’m near to fifty I’m worrying about crepe-y neck skin and wrinkles—the kind that show even when you’re not laughing.  At the moment I am even missing a tooth.

A few years ago I began photographing New Directions program graduates as a way to give them an image for Linkedin & social media profiles. Or even just to have as a “Yes I did this important thing for myself” memento. I use natural window light and the career center’s blue-grey wall as a backdrop.  They’re pretty straightforward headshots— there isn’t time to get creative.

I retouch them a little bit, because I know I would appreciate this myself.  Removing a blemish is an easy decision, but for women with scars or a bruise; or moles, birthmarks and bumps that have been part of the landscape of their skin for their entire lives, I pause. I want to ask, “What would you like me to do?  Do you carry this mark proudly?  Or would you prefer I erase it?”  I don’t know yet how to have this conversation with a stranger in thirty seconds before I focus my lens and let her know I’ll count to three.

Normally I don’t show people the back of the camera after taking their photo, but sometimes I get excited by someone’s great smile or expression and I let them peek. “Oh no!” someone has said more than once. “That looks like my drivers’ license photo!”  I cringe. I want her to see what I see.  I tell her that her driver’s license photo must be fabulous.

Our relationship with our appearance is complicated, and seems to have gotten more so in the age of selfies, Instagram, and soft-focus filters. But, ladies, let’s not erase our entire selves.  We are beautiful.

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learn more about the New Directions Career Center at their website,
www.newdirectionscc.org

A Lake in Summer

We went back to the Poconos again this year to visit John’s friends at their cabin on the lake. I brought books, my camera, my writing notebook, and my bathing suit— perfect.

Sailing! I’d only been in a small boat once since I signed up at the community boating center in Boston 25 years ago and learned how to sail on the Charles River. John too—who used to live on a sailboat and even went to the Galapagos via the Panama Canal—hadn’t been in a tiny Sunfish in a long time. Here he is with Richard in the race (the two boats on the left).

I spent a lot of time in this beautiful little library, reading and working on some writing. Every day I had my favorite corner table to myself, with a view out the window of the birch trees.

Katherine seemed to hit it off with Jackie the cat. They spent afternoons chilling out on the porch together.

Katherine also passed the lake’s very rigorous swim test, which was a big deal because it meant she could participate in fun activities like pirate sailing (where you try to board and commandeer other sailors’ boats— or just tip them over) and paddleboard jousting (where you knock other people off their boards with giant pool noodles).

I think she had the most fun just hanging out with her dad, though.

I went for a walk in the woods every day…

… and spent some time in the nature center. This was such a cool place, with books and activity guides, tanks of fish and frogs and snakes, and taxidermied local animals and pressed flowers and plants, birds’ nests, skulls, and monarch butterfly caterpillars munching on leaves — pretty much anything you’d find at a natural history museum but on a smaller, more intimate scale.

Ever since swimming with lily pads in New Hampshire a few years ago, I think they’re especially magical. It could be easy to get tangled up in the tendrils floating underneath, but if you just float through without moving too much, it feels like you’re being caressed by underwater fairies.

The lake is quiet. There are no jet-skis allowed and even motorboats can only be a certain size. When we swam off the dock it felt like our very own world.

Back at the cabin. Jackie loves the window seat…

And I loved our cozy bedroom, with the ferns and forest right out the window. (And with bedspreads that I wanted to steal and turn into a dress :-)

Thank you again, Marguerite, Richard, Natalie, & Alexander, for sharing your summer paradise with us!

View last year’s Poconos post HERE.