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I am drawn towards that which stands out against its background. Images that arrest my attention might include a lone birch tree tenaciously holding its ground among darker-barked oaks, or a basketball hoop shivering by itself through yet another snowstorm that enshrouds the landscape in pale white fog and that has sent its human playmates into domestic hibernation a long time ago.
Similarly, the lives of ordinary people are dotted with experiences and actions that stubbornly remain standing when most of their neighboring memories have fallen. Our lives in review appear more like dot-to-dot drawings than unbroken brush strokes. This collection of photographs is a tribute to the extraordinary experiences and actions of everyday people. These experiences and actions—good and bad—are the accents both in the lives of the people who lived the events and in our collective humanity.
What began as a simple intention to create portraits of people who have done or experienced extraordinary things revealed several surprises. First was my discovery that there is a lot more ordinary than extraordinary. Finding subjects was difficult. Many responded to my inquiries with descriptions of extraordinary people who had delivered hundreds of babies or who had served with or even started benevolent and philanthropic organizations. These people are of course amazing, and their selflessness is worthy of our admiration, but this is not the tribute I set out to make. Specific stories that set one person’s experiences apart from those of most others were much more elusive.
I also discovered that it was hard to pinpoint what I meant by the term “extraordinary.” It turns out that extraordinary comes in many flavors, which is why I decided to cast a wide net. In the end, my choices were of course subjective. I picked the stories that I found intriguing and that I thought would interest others. Here are the varieties of “extraordinary” that I have uncovered so far:
Both the visual and the textual elements are designed to offer a layered experience to viewers. My hope is that a viewer would first find something interesting and worth considering based solely on the image. Next, the titles—along with visual allusions to a story— should intrigue the viewer enough that he or she wants to read the text. Finally, I hope that viewers will—after viewing many photographs
—walk away reflecting on the choices, actions, decisions, behaviors, and experiences that stand out in their own lives and that form the dot-to-dot lines that are their pasts.