Meryl Streep

Meryl Streep and Al Pacino say that it is good to establish early on that you are not worried about vanity--to just "send it packing."

Meryl Streep said, in an interview a few years ago, "People so want to set you in a box... It's reductive of my humanity and my engine. I have much more to give than that."


Of course she (or they, rather) were talking about acting.



I adore Meryl Streep.


In her, I see someone that loves what they do and does it fearlessly; in turn, changing the way it is done.

She inspires me.


I recently watched the movie One True Thing. It is not the first time I have been left speechless by one of Meryl Streep's performances, but it was the most recent.

I am a bit of a busy-body and I rarely sit through an entire movie. At the very least, I am up several times for bathroom breaks and snacks.


When One True Thing ended, Matt said, "You didn't move through that entire movie." I was fixated.

The character Meryl played in it very much reminded me of my mother. So from the beginning, I felt connected to this woman. Her decline was so real, so honest. At times, her skin so pale she looked like death with little hair or scarves tied around her head. Her face was colorless. There was nothing glamorous. She was hard to look at.


She played that role, and many other roles, bravely.



I very much love photography. It has been life-changing for me. But I do have to admit that I don't just love it as a whole. I don't love to read the magazines. I don't love to read the blogs of other photographers. Amazing angles and art done in Photoshop do little for me.


I love photographs that move me. That change the way I see the world, or that make me appreciate parts of it that I had been overlooking.


I look at photography and I feel disappointed a lot. I have a constant longing for it to be more. For it to show more. For it to grasp more. For it to move me... for it to express me.


I was thinking after watching One True Thing... I was thinking about the way it changed the entire way I was looking at the world... even the way I looked at my mother and I was thinking... I want to do that with my photography.

I don't want to be set in a box with photography. I don't want people to know what to expect from me. And I don't want to worry about my vanity.


Not every photo has to look perfect. If it makes a person laugh or cry, it did it's job. If it makes someone think, or grabs them, or helps them appreciate, or remember...


I know how to take a perfect photo. And I will. But it's not my goal, and it's not even that important.


A lot of people can do that, and I believe any fully functioning person can learn to do that.



I just... believe that I have much more to give than that too.