The problem, as photographer and mentor Sid Grossman saw it, is that ‘most people don’t regard photography as an act of living and therefore they regard it as a search for something interesting.’ Indeed, the fascination is in the ordinary: a morning commute, a news vendor passing time. Random moments of no particular import until they are frozen, their details now lasting reflections of ourselves and our kindreds, there for us to inhabit as we will.

All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream. -Edgar Allen Poe

Who are we when we are in between: no longer here, not yet there? Our daily routes, a thousand times travelled, require no attention. They invite us inward, habitual time on our hands, to lose ourselves in private moments inadvertently on display in these most public spaces. Who are we in these unguarded moments? I watch for them, often below in the stations and vessels of the subways where no horizon distracts us, the better to summon our interiors. I see no Others, no Adversaries about whom we are warned, but kindreds, in transit on a shared journey considered with no particular hope or despair; simply considered.

There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it. -Edith Wharton

How long ought it take a nation to own its past? We cling fast to weary myths of race and identity; their images persist, disembodied, like pages from history lessons not yet learned.

. . . Imagined endings.

To live in Washington DC is to immerse in America's running debate with itself, on display almost daily at the city’s ubiquitous protests and demonstrations. I often attend, less to explore the issues (all potent, familiar, wanting resolution) than to watch for when ‘left’ and ‘right’, ‘pro’ or ‘anti’ pause, distracted for an instant from the cause, similarities more than differences on display. We seem in these moments so very capable of conversation.

Homelessness in Portland is on the rise. The city’s reputation as one of America’s most livable cities draws a stream of newcomers, hastening a citywide gentrification that transforms neighborhoods and pushes basic shelter beyond the reach of more Portlanders. A 2017 homeless census showed a 10% increase in unsheltered people in the prior two years and a 31% increase in those staying in shelters and emergency housing. During the same period, rents in Portland grew 20 times faster than median income. As a result, tensions have grown between well-intentioned residents and the houseless themselves. For the latter, daily life can include violence, demoralization, and a lingering sense of 'otherness'. In the Pearl District, on downtown’s northern rim, Sisters of the Road Cafe serves as an oasis of dignity for this community. The small nonprofit has been serving locally sourced, fresh cooked meals since 1979. The food is exemplary by restaurant, let alone ‘soup kitchen’, standards. But Sisters' nourishment reaches far beyond food. They aim, successfully, to interrupt the cycle of violence and oppression by building a safe space in which community thrives ‘one relationship at a time,’ creating a humanizing foothold from which the temporarily houseless can help themselves, and one other, up. The effect is palpable - the midday lunch buzz exuding an air something like a daily family reunion. [Photographed in collaboration with Momenta Workshops - momentaworkshops.com.]