Magnolias and memories...

I just finished signing my first "large" edition for our upcoming show in September.

The print makers have each created an edition of 10 images to be boxed together and sold as a limited edition portfolio to be offered at our show. My print is called Magnolia.

I am quite happy with my image and feel much like I did after hours and days in the darkroom printing..."I need to print these again". I wanted to reprint the series again, for a third time and figured that it was time to walk away and just let them go.

The perfectionist in me constantly battles with the "let it be" free-spirit...I often find myself balancing the two gingerly.

I am also quietly reflecting on my life...it is know to many that I have walked a bit of earth looking around. Some of the places have a mighty dark past...heck, what place doesn't these days. I think it was triggered by the horrible loss of the Air France jet over the ocean. It has left me feeling everything....intensified.

I went with a group of people 17 ago, to China to study Political Science and Anthropology. One of the many places we visited after school classes were out was Tienanmen Square. We were the first group our instructors had taken back sine the "bloody crackdown". This was an emotional trip for the instructors and for many of us that had watched this all play out on TV just three years before.

Like many I wanted to take a picture of the square, it was HUGE and vast and historic.

Our trip included the government assigned Chinese minders, lovely people but watchful and curious of what we were interested in. We were monitored everywhere by them.

It became very clear, very quickly that were were not allowed to speak of what had happened.

I silently made note of the replaced tiles as I walked around in the vast square...thinking about those who had died and those who were to be forgotten.

I think is something in the universe tonight, that I find myself sitting down and signing the edition of my Magnolias (the symbol of fidelity*) on the very evening I am reflecting on my memories of Beijing on thanksgiving day 1992.

*fidelity: accuracy, truthfulness