Everybody Keeps Asking Me Why...

My first tattoo was a butterfly on my wrist. I had just turned 18 and couldn't think of a better means through which to commemorate the change, growth, metamorphosis that I hoped was on its way. As I blazed my trail, days passed, and I became acutely aware of butterflies: Butterflies in the garden, in the street, outside my window, all around me, everywhere. They became this kind of gracious omen, a message that I was in the exact right place at that moment of my life. After a year or so with this tattoo, I came to realize that I didn't really want the butterfly on my wrist. I didn't regret it, I just didn't need it anymore. I came to understand that we are all butterflies, constantly changing, becoming someone better, someone more. Something inside me needed that ink on my skin to be more meaningful - to be less about what I thought I wanted or needed to be and more about something bigger than myself. 

Then, I left for Cambodia. It was an adventure the likes of which I had never experienced before. I began working at a children's hospital there, making art with the young patients resigned to their beds. There were many children in that hospital who taught me new things every day - new things about life, about myself, about the human spirit. The truly important things in life were no longer about making the rent payment on time or how much money I had in the bank. No. The important things?...rubbing someone's belly when he didn't have the strength to do it for himself, smiling at someone, making new friends, building things together, laughing. One of the most shocking lessons I learned - the real gravity of a photograph. This is something that, as a photographer, I was stunned to learn I never knew.

There was a young girl at the hospital, no more than ten years old. Every day she would smile at me as we folded origami birds together to hang above her mattress-less bed. You would never have guessed by looking at her, that she was, with every passing day, battling an aggressive enemy: AIDS. Her family outfitted her bed with every toy they could gather the change to buy. She was very clearly loved. She always wore two plastic, gold bracelets around her left wrist. Finally, after working with her for a few weeks, I felt both she and her family had warmed up to me enough to trust me to make an honest photograph of her. I brought in my camera on a Thursday and made a single photograph. When I returned on Friday with the 4x6 print fresh off the local fuji print shop presses, her bed was empty. Her family was gone. I was told by a nurse that she had died. I felt numb. I handed the nurse the photograph of the young girl taken just one day earlier, and he promised me he would get the picture to her family. When I returned to work at the hospital on Monday morning, the nurse came to find me. He told me he had given the image of the little girl to her family and that their response was an emotional one. After spending ten years on this earth, this child's family hadn't the means or the inclination to ever have a single photograph made of her. 

That was the day I was taught about the power and meaning a photograph can bring to someone's life. It wasn't a lesson I learned in some university by some wonderful professor. It wasn't something I could've ever taught myself. This was a lesson that could only have come to me through this particular child, at this particular moment in my life. Was I meant to go to Cambodia? Absolutely. Was I meant to meet this little girl? Without a doubt. Do I believe she was put into my life to teach me about living, about dying, about being present in every moment? Do I believe that? With every breath I've yet to take.

The butterfly tattoo is gone. In it's place?: two gold colored rings around my left wrist, joined together by a heart. Growing, changing, metamorphosis - it's all about learning, about letting go of the need to be in control of what comes into and exits out of your life. Letting go, it frees you. It allows for an unexpected communion between souls. It is there that the real lessons are learned. It's in that place where you discover yourself. 

I see butterflies, almost every day. They remind me of that little girl, of why I do the things I do and make the choices that I make. They remind me that life is fragile, and without notice, the smallest gust of wind can change the direction of one or many lives, entirely. Life is fluid, like the pull of the tides. It can't be controlled or stuffed into a box. The best any of us can ever hope to do is to find a solid board, paddle out, charge some waves, coast over others, and, forgive the cliche, but, enjoy the ride.

I started Follow Your Art because that little girl changed me forever. I want to live my life with her memory on my heart. I do this because she made me believe that one person can powerfully affect another. That young girl stared her fears in the face, without hesitation, with a smile. I owe her at least this - much in the same way many of us feel we owe it to our greatest teachers to respect the lessons they taught us through living them each day. I am in a great debt of gratitude toward her for what she has taught me. It is my true privilege to honor her in this way, through creating this program. And that is my answer to the why.