Portrait of a Book Club

When moving to a new community, the first thing many people do is join a church. I join a book club. That is where I first create my community around a shared belief system, the love of books.

My photography class final project assignment was completely open-ended. I wanted to do a project that was meaningful to me, but I didn't want to take photos of my children. That would hardly be more than my everyday activity, and I wanted to stretch my abilities. I tend to prefer to take photos of inanimate objects, but I pushed myself in that regard as well. I decided to create a portrait of my book club.

Surprisingly, without a great deal of persuasion required, ten women took time out of their lives to allow me to photograph them. My only request was that I photograph each reading a book in her home. I wanted to capture each of them in her natural habitat.

I joined this book club the second month I lived in Rhode Island. A few have left, and several have joined since then. We have been static for about the last two years, and these women have become my friends. I have always considered them to be intelligent, witty, beautiful people. It was only after staring at their faces for hour upon hour during the editing process that I fully realized what outer beauty they each have as well. I have been so comfortable with and impressed with these women for such a long time now that it never occurred to me to consider how they look in addition to who they are. After this project, I admire both their inner and outer beauty, as well as their lovely homes. I did my best to try to capture something of how I see each person in the photo I chose to present.

Here is my portrait of our book club.

 (For those of you who don't recognize me, I'm the last photo. Self-portraits are a pain, by the way.)